I never understood the appeal of the pipe operator. It's a kludge to work around the need to eta-expand chained function compositions, which in turn is a kludge to work around the value restriction, which in turn is a kludge to prevent the combination of polymorphism and storage effects from breaking type soundness. Haskell doesn't need any of this.

I agree with you. I'm going to write a post about function application and composition (right-to-left / left-to-right) so other communities can stop discussing non-essential matters.

I do like the fact that the `pipe operator` is often mentioned along the bash '|' which is used in a pointfree style.

Well it might make sense sometimes, so its good to know one's options :)

  p x y z = f (g x y) z
  p       = ((.) f) . g

Of course, something is very wrong if you ever use a section of the function composition operator. Use point-free within reason... :-p

Or go completely, absolutely nuts with point-free and use J (http://www.jsoftware.com/).