Especially in connection with `point free' notation, its overuse
can lead to impenetrable thickets of operators like:
((.(.)).) (where `.' stands for the composition
operator). (Point free notation is a calculation-oriented syntax
favoured by Dutch computer scientists which contrives among other
things to avoid explicit use of variable binding constructs.) If
one is adept at carrying out formal manipulations reliably,
unhindered by worrying about what the formulas mean, it is fine.
Sections are written as (op), ( op e ),
or ( e op ), where op is a binary operator and e is an
expression.
For binary operator op and expression e, the section (op
e) is equivalent to \ x -> x op e if x
is a variable that does not occur free in e, and the
section (e op) is equivalent to (op) e
. I believe that (op e) is called a right section,
and (e op) a left section.
There is an explanation of the notation in the Haskell report, here.
Another quite common convention with the same agenda of alleviating
the burden of bound-variable notation sometimes uses an underline
character as a blank to indicate `where the argument goes', as in
( _ op _ ),(_ op e) and (e op
_). This can be clear, but it seems noisier than it needs to
be. (One can use simply a small amound of space for the blank, but it
isn't loud enough.) Furthermore, it useful to use the underline
character (again, as in Haskell) as a special identifier which may
only occur in binding position, to make it clear that the variable
named by the identifier has no occurrences in the scope of the binding
construct.
There are some old notes related to this, concerning `split' operators.