13 pointsby leontrolski12 hours ago5 comments
  • flebron8 hours ago
    The website asks what they do in Haskell. The answer is property modification and reading, as well as very powerful traversal constructs, use lenses (https://hackage.haskell.org/package/lens , tutorial at https://hackage.haskell.org/package/lens-tutorial-1.0.5/docs...).
    • leontrolski42 minutes ago
      What would be the equivalent to this in Haskell (with or without lens):

          cat = Cat(age=3)
          l = [1, [2, cat], 4]
          alt l[1][1].age.=9
      
      That would give us l equal to:

          [1, [2, Cat(age=9)], 4]
  • RodgerTheGreat7 hours ago
    In Lil[0], this is how ordinary assignment syntax works. Implicitly defining a dictionary stored in a variable named "cat" with a field "age":

        cat.age:3
        # {"age":3}
    
    Defining "l" as in the example in the article. We need the "list" operator to enlist nested values so that the "," operator doesn't concatenate them into a flat list:

        l:1,(list 2,list cat),4
        # (1,(2,{"age":3}),4)
    
    Updating the "age" field in the nested dictionary. Lil's basic datatypes are immutable, so "l" is rebound to a new list containing a new dictionary, leaving any previous references undisturbed:

        l[1][1].age:9
        # (1,(2,{"age":9}),4)
        cat
        # {"age":3}
    
    There's no special "infix" promotion syntax, so that last example would be:

        l:l,5
        # (1,(2,{"age":9}),4,5)
    
    [0] http://beyondloom.com/tools/trylil.html
    • leontrolskian hour ago
      This is surprising to me:

        l[1][1].age:9
        # (1,(2,{"age":9}),4)
      
      How come it doesn't return just:

        {"age":9}
      
      Or is there something totally different going on with references here? As in, how is this different to:

        l_inner = l[1][1]
        l_inner.age:9
  • hatthew8 hours ago
    It seems like this is proposing syntactic sugar to make mutating and non-mutating operations be on equal footing.

    > The more interesting example is reassigning the deeply nested l to make the cat inside older, without mutating the original cat

    Isn't that mutating l, though? If you're concerned about mutating cat, shouldn't you be concerned about mutating l?

    • two_handfuls8 hours ago
      It doesn't mutate l exactly, it makes a new list slightly different from the original one and assigns it to l.

      That means if someone has a reference to the original l, they do not see the change (because l is immutable. Both of them).

      • 4 hours ago
        undefined
      • hatthew4 hours ago
        I think I am misunderstanding the behavior of the alt keyword
  • rokob8 hours ago
    Yeah this looks like lenses at first glance
  • beaumayns8 hours ago
    q has the concept of amend, which is similar: https://code.kx.com/q4m3/6_Functions/#683-general-form-of-fu...

    It's quite handy, though the syntax for it is rather clunky compared to the rest of the language in my opinion.