Imperative OOP Ceremony: Parenthesis

Parenthesis

Parenthesis are used for forming nested expressions, when necessary.

(20 + 1) * 2  -- -> 42
 20 + 1  * 2  -- -> 22
(42) == 42    -- -> True

Parenthesis around singleton arguments (or unary tuples in FP lingo) are superfluous, which is why they are ommitted when coding in idiomatic Haskell.

import Data.Char

upperA = toUpper 'a'

main = do {
  print(toUpper('a'));
  print upperA;
}

Haskell has a Void type (FP lingo: Unit), which is a nullary tuple, (), whose only value is () (void, if you will). Defining functions with () as an argument looks nice, but would be quite a pointless ceremony.

pointless() = "Hello World!"

main = do {
  print(pointless());
}

Argument Vectors

An argument vector is a group of values being passed to a function. (Parenthesis are mandatory for argument vectors.)

import Prelude hiding ((.))
x.f = f x
-- show
printPair(first, second) = do {
  print first;
  print second;
}

main = do {
  printPair("Hello World!", 42);
}
-- /show

In Haskell, argument vectors are values, too. An argument vector holding 2 elements is a pair, one holding 3 elements is a triple, and so on. The values of a pair can be easily extracted with fst and snd.

import Prelude hiding ((.))
x.f = f x
-- show
printPair p = do {
  print(p.fst);
  print(p.snd);
}

pair = ("Hello World!", 42)

main = do {
  printPair("Hello World!", 42);
  printPair pair;
}
-- /show

Since functions in Haskell are "closurized" by default (FP lingo: curried), argument vectors are not being used as such. Instead, they are primitive data structures, a poor man's object, if you will. Therefore, argument vectors are being referred to as mere tuples in FP lingo.

import Prelude hiding ((.))
x.f = f x
-- show
printPair(first, second) = do {
  print first;
  print second;
}

printWith = curry printPair

main = do {
  42.printWith "Hello World!";
}
-- /show

As we can see, method notation doesn't require for parenthesis either. (We wrote 42.printWith "Hello World!".) When we don't write in OOP notation, we simply put the argument on the left side of the dot operator to the end of our operator expression: printWith "Hello World!" 42 (or "Hello World!" `printWith` 42), which is the idiomatic way of writing Haskell code. (We could also write (-) 42 1 instead of 42 - 1.)

import Prelude hiding ((.))
x.f = f x
printPair(first, second) = do {
  print first;
  print second;
}

printWith = curry printPair

-- show
main = do {
  42.printWith "Hello World!";
  printWith "Hello World!" 42;
}
-- /show

If we wanted to use parenthesis in order to show the order in which (partial) functions apply, they would stick to the left, because printWith "Hello World!" is a partially applied closure which takes 42 as its last argument. (In FP lingo, function application is left associative.)

printWith "Hello World!" 42 == (printWith "Hello World!") 42
(-) 42 1 == ((-) 42) 1  -- -> 41

In the next tutorial we shall finally see some objects. :)

Sections

Parenthesis

Void

Argument Vectors