Bang! And Other Infix Functions

Published July 25, 2016 · 4 Minute Read · ∞ Permalink

Elm is usually pretty clear, but there are certain things that are a little hard to search for. One of those is the ! operator, introduced in 0.17. What does it do? Where does it come from? And even more important, when should you use it?

You’ll see ! (pronounced “bang”) in the return values for update functions, like so:

update : Msg -> Model -> (Model, Cmd Msg)
update msg model =
    case msg of
        Increment ->
            { model | counter = counter + 1 } ! [ ]

You can infer the type that it’s returning: (Model, Cmd Msg). Even if you can do that, though, it’s pretty weird the first couple times you see it. So let’s look at…

The Type Signature

The type signature for ! (found in Platform.Cmd) is this:

(!) : model -> List (Cmd msg) -> (model, Cmd msg)

Defining an operator in Elm is simple–this is all there is to it, plus the function body. The parentheses around the name ((!) instead of just !) mean that it’s an infix function. You’ve seen this before! Consider the following:

1 + 1

+ is a function, right? We’re using it as an “infix” function here (meaning it’s between the arguments instead of in front of them.) But we can use it like a prefix (what we think of as “normal”) function as well. That means that:

(+) 1 1 == 1 + 1

Both these statements result in 2. They’re the same thing! We can define + using the following type signature:

(+) : number -> number -> number

In other words, it’s a function that takes two numbers and returns a number. So let’s look again at !: it takes a model (on the left) and a list of Cmd (on the right). If we were to write it in prefix style, it looks like this:

(!) { model | counter = counter + 1 } [ ]

In other words, it’s a shortcut for returning (Model, Cmd Msg). To be more specific, it’s like returning (model, Cmd.batch [ ]). And if we look at the source, that’s actually exactly what it does.

(!) : model -> List (Cmd msg) -> (model, Cmd msg)
(!) model commands =
  (model, batch commands)

Creating Your Own Infix Functions

Given the above, when and why should you create your own infix functions? Think of it like wasabi in cooking: a little bit goes a long way. Unless you have an operation that you need to do over and over and over, consider using a prefix function instead. In fact, the Elm package design guidelines recommend not introducing new operators unless absolutely necessary. And if you do, please be explicit about importing them, since they’re hard to search for. That is, do this:

import MyCoolModule exposing ((<*>))

Instead of this:

import MyCoolModule exposing (..)

That way it’s easy to see at a glance where a given operator is coming from.

When to Use !

All that said, when should one use !? Short answer: in all your update functions! It’s a great little shortcut. Where you used to return (model, Cmd.none), you can now return model ! [ ]. That said, if it’s not your style, just ignore it. The ! operator is pure syntactic sugar. So if you don’t like it, just don’t use it.

Boom, Done!

You now know when and how to use !. The bigger win here, though, is that you now know how infix functions work!