Re: [xml-dev] XPath +/- etc not first class functions

[Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>]

> On 28 Aug 2017, at 21:57, Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Aug 28, 2017 at 1:47 PM, Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com> wrote:
>> Yes: perhaps this could be the shortest EXPath spec ever. Just define a binding of the op prefix to the namespace http://expath.org/ns/operators and you're done.
>> 
> 
> Yes, but the name
> 
>    op:numeric-add()
> 
> seems prohibitively-long and inconvenient. Kinda Hungarian notation ...
> 
> Compare to Haskell' section
> (https://wiki.haskell.org/Section_of_an_infix_operator):
> 
> (+)
> 
> Seems like there is definitely considerable space for improvement
> 


Two problems with that: (a) it would need syntax extensions rather than just a function library, and (b) operators are polymorphic in a way that functions aren't (which is why we have the long names).

Michael Kay
Saxonica