Operators

An operator is a function that is written in a special way. Normal functions are written before their arguments, like f(x,y). Binary (two-argument) operators are symbols or words which are written in between their two arguments, like 1 + 2. Disco has many built-in operators which are symbols (like +, *, /, etc.) as well as a few which are words (like mod, choose, and divides).

Disco also has three unary operators: arithmetic negation (-) and logical negation (¬ or not) are written in front of their one argument, and factorial (!) is written after its argument.

When multiple operators are used together, Disco uses their precedence and associativity to decide how to interpret it.

Twiddle notation

Disco has a special syntax for talking about operators on their own, without any arguments: a tilde (or “twiddle”) (~) goes in each place where an argument would be. For example, to talk about the + operator on its own we can write ~+~. To talk about the factorial operator we would write ~!, because factorial only takes a single argument which goes before it. Disco will use this “twiddle notation” when you ask it for the type of an operator:

Disco> :type !
~! : ℕ → ℕ
Disco> :type ~!
~! : ℕ → ℕ

Note that in this case, we can write ! or ~! and Disco understands either one.

The twiddle notation is also useful when giving an operator as an argument to a higher-order function:

Disco> reduce(~+~, 0, [1 .. 10])
55

Operator documentation

You can ask for documentation about operators directly, for example:

Disco> :doc !
~! : ℕ → ℕ

n! computes the factorial of n, that is, 1 * 2 * ... * n.

https://disco-lang.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reference/factorial.html