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  • Kim Nguyễn's avatar
    Implement the syntax ``t (t1, …, tn)'' for type instantiation, without · 07bc7bc1
    Kim Nguyễn authored
    requiring an abscence of whitespace between ``t'' and ``(''.  Outside
    of regular expression contexts, ``t (t1, …, tn)'' is parsed with a
    higher precedence than & and \, to allow one to write
    ``t (Int) & Bool'' without extra parentheses (i.e.
    ``(t (Int)) & Bool'').  Inside a regular expression, type
    instantiation and sequencing become ambiguous, and there is no way to
    distinguish syntactically: ``[ Int (Int, Int) ]'' from
    ``[ t (Int, Int) ]''. The former should resolve to a sequence while
    the latter only makes sense as an instantiation (if ``t'' is a
    parametric type). Both are treated as element sequencing and
    disambiguated during identifier resolution (more precisely during the
    "derecurse" phase, before typechecking).
    
    Note that due to the lower precedence of sequencing w.r.t to other
    regular expression constructs, a type ``[ t (Int)* ]'' will be parsed
    correctly, but yield an error message saying that t is not fully
    intantiated. One has to write ``[ (t (Int))* ]'' which is similar to
    function applications for expressions.
    
    Finally, we also re-order sequencing after typing to always group a
    potential type instantiation with its argument, i.e. we transform
    sequences such as
    ``[ t1 t2 t3 ... tn ]'' (which are parsed as
    ``[ (((t1 t2) t3) ... tn) ]'' because sequence concatenation is
    left-associative) into ``[ ... (ti tj) ... ]'' if ``ti'' is an
    identifier and ``tj'' is of the form ``(s1,...,sk)''. This is sound
    because concatenation of regular expression is associative (and the
    original sequence would fail, anyway).
    07bc7bc1