back
1 comments
It's better visually. No dot, ., :, :., ::, ::., :::, etc. have increasing visual weight, which shows which are the more top-level operators without having to match up parentheses.
I see. It’s not clear how it would interact with operator precedence, however. For example, what would

    a * . b + c . + d * e
do?
Yeah. I'm not sure how one would handle that. (Can't remember if Whitehead & Russell had any inherent operator precedence.)

So may be most useful if you don't have inherent precedence, as might be the case if you're not dealing with the standard math operators.

Alternatively, one might say the dots override inherent precedence. So

    a *. b*c+d*e
means

    a * (b*c+d*e)
with the inherent precedence disambiguating the right operand of *.