Does making a function infix change it's precedence somehow? If I write
3 `take` reverse "123456789"
in ghci, it returns 987, but if I write
take 3 reverse "123456789"
I get an error, presumably because it interprets this as (take 3 reverse) "123456789" and I can't pass reverse as an argument to take. Why does it not interpret the first statement this way? Isn't function application right associative?
Yes, the 3 `take` reverse "123456789" is parsed as (3) `take` (reverse "123456789"), so take (3) (reverse "123456789").
Now take is thus an operator, and operators have lower pecedence. As is specified in the Haskell report:
Any operator lacking a fixity declaration is assumed to be
infixl 9.
So take has here fixity 9. If you thus would use this as:
'0' : 3 `take` reverse "1234567890" it will be parsed as:
'0' : (3 `take` reverse "1234567890")since : has fixity infixr 5.