distfix

<programming>

("distributed fixity"?) A description of an operator represented by multiple symbols before, between, and/or after the arguments.

The classical example is the C conditional operator, "?:" which is written 

 E1 ? E2 : E3
If E1 is true it returns E2 otherwise it returns E3. Several functional programming languages, e.g. Hope, Haskell, have similar operators ("if E1 then E2 else E3").

Objective C messages are effectively distfix operator applications: 

 getRow:row andColumn:col ofCell:cell
is a message with three arguments, row, col, and cell.

Last updated: 1997-01-21

Nearby terms:

Dissociated Press ♦ distfix ♦ Distinguished Encoding Rules ♦ Distributed Component Object Model

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