I never realized that languages have so many strict precedence levels because that’s easier to implement than not having them.
This here seems like a very good idea and I hope other languages in active development take note. And als JS’ Prettier, which actively removes parentheses like these.
JavaScript does something similar for the exponentiation operator. This is a syntax error:
-a ** b
Someone who learned PEMDAS in school may argue it should be equivalent to -(a * b), while a programmer may be used to unary operators binding tightest, so (-a) * b.
C/C++ obviously have far too many precedence levels, but you can easily have a more readable tower without forcing parentheses, like Go's 5 levels: https://go.dev/ref/spec#Operator_precedence
Worth noting, WGSL does this too, and is mostly a bit stricter than Zig: `a + b & c` and `a << b & c` are errors in WGSL but accepted by Zig. (Quick: off the top of your head, how do those parse)?
I never realized that languages have so many strict precedence levels because that’s easier to implement than not having them.
This here seems like a very good idea and I hope other languages in active development take note. And als JS’ Prettier, which actively removes parentheses like these.
No you can have no precedence at all see Lisp and APL for examples.
Lisp because everything is explicit and only the form just inside an opening parenthesis does anything. APL as all is scanned right to left.
JavaScript does something similar for the exponentiation operator. This is a syntax error:
Someone who learned PEMDAS in school may argue it should be equivalent to -(a * b), while a programmer may be used to unary operators binding tightest, so (-a) * b.C/C++ obviously have far too many precedence levels, but you can easily have a more readable tower without forcing parentheses, like Go's 5 levels: https://go.dev/ref/spec#Operator_precedence
Worth noting, WGSL does this too, and is mostly a bit stricter than Zig: `a + b & c` and `a << b & c` are errors in WGSL but accepted by Zig. (Quick: off the top of your head, how do those parse)?
I'm thinking of doing this for symbolasm also.
I like the compromise, although I still think operator precedence in itself is evil :P Lisp kinda made the right call by mistake.
You're not wrong, but
So did Forth, but that's no guarantee for readability. APL got the worst of both worlds, IMO.
Made the right call, yes, but at the right time and with the right parameters above all!