[racket-dev] Racket2 suggestion: Attaching properties to operators

On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 6:44 PM, Matthias Felleisen <matthias at ccs.neu.edu>wrote:

>
> C++ has tried this tack for some time.


Sounds like it has failed then.


> I can see doing for built-ins but how would you go about
> programmer-created operations? Trust the programmer? -- Matthias
>

Well, I guess some checks can be added, but I don't see the difference
between attaching bad properties to a newly created operator and defining a
buggy procedure.

Laurent



>
> On May 5, 2013, at 11:00 AM, Laurent wrote:
>
> > Speaking of invariants, from time to time I would like Racket to know
> some properties about its usual operators, so that some usual treatments
> get simplified and can be easily generalized.
> >
> > For example, considering group theory, properties like
> 'identity-element', 'absorbing-elements', 'inverse-operator',
> 'commutative?', 'associative?' and such could be attached to operators like
> `+', `*', `max', `string-append', `hc-append', etc.
> > Forms like `for/op' could use this information to know how to loop and
> accumulate, and even possibly to optimize the code, even for newly created
> operators.
> > In the simple case of + and such, one also only needs to define the
> binary operator, and the multi-argument procedure can be generated
> automatically.
> >
> > Of course it needs not be tied to group/category/mathematical theory. It
> can be about whatever is useful.
> >
> > It's only an idea, in case this resonates for someone.
> >
> > Laurent
> > _________________________
> >  Racket Developers list:
> >  http://lists.racket-lang.org/dev
>
>
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