Weird edge case in the language syntax '1 - 2' /= '1 -2'

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1

I’ve been trying to implement an Elm compile (here) in my free time and I found a weird edge case in the language syntax with the prefix minus. Using the elm repl I get the following output:

> 1 - 2
-1 : number
> 1 -2
-- TOO MANY ARGS ----------------------------------------------------------- elm

This value is not a function, but it was given 1 argument.

4| 1 -2
    ^
Are there any missing commas? Or missing parentheses?
> 1- 2
-1 : number
> 1-2
-1 : number

In the second example there is an error because the prefix minus has higher priority that the function application, but in fourth example there is no error.

I want to know how the compiler determines the priority of the prefix minus, unfortunately I don’t know Haskell well enough to just read the compiler source code.

2

That sounds like a really fun project! I hope we hear more about it someday :slight_smile:. To answer your question, when the elm parser sees - it first parses it as a binary operator. Then it does an explicit check for this exact scenario: if I just parsed a minus sign, and there’s no trailing space, then convert it to a negation. At least, that’s my best attempt at translating the Haskell. Here are the exact lines if you want to dig more.

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4

Thanks for your attempt to translate the Haskell code, even if it’s similar to Elm, I get lost at those $ and <-

Seems like I just need to handle the special case, the problem is that I don’t have the position of the tokens when parsing, I plan to add that in the near future for better error reporting, but for now I will have to use different tokens for the - and - with spaces.

Also since the project is in Rust I can compile it to WebAssembly, so you will probably hear about the project soon.

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5

Totally an opinion and clearly not on parity with how elm currently works but I say make infix operators not surrounded by whitespace a syntax error. elm-format isn’t going to let you get away with writing 1-2, 1- 2 or 23|>String.fromInt, I can’t recall a time I’ve seen anyone use those forms, and elm is a whitespace significant language anyway.

On a related note, 1<-2 produces:

I do not recognize the (<-) operator.

34|     let _ = 1<-2
                 ^^
Is there an `import` and `exposing` entry for it? Maybe you want (-) or (<)
instead?
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