[Haskell-cafe] Overloading

[Peter Caspers]

>> In C++ it is perfectly normal to have overloaded functions like
>>
>> f : Int -> Int -> Int
>> f : Int -> Char -> Int
> Something that may not be obvious about Haskell is that
> Haskell does NOT have overloaded functions/operators at all.

thanks, this was the core of my question. So by example, if I define a 
Date type as

data Date = Date Int deriving Show

representing a date by its serial number and want two constructors 
(conditions are only examples here)

-- smart constructor with serialNumber
date serialNumber
          | serialNumber > 0 = Date serialNumber
          | otherwise = error ("invalid serialNumber " ++ show serialNumber)

-- smart constructor with day month year
date2 day month year
         | month >= 1 && month <=12 = undefined
         | otherwise = error ("invalid month " ++ show month)

there is no way of naming both functions date (instead of date2 above, 
which compiles), right ? I still think the basic reason is that

date 5

would then either refer to the first constructor (i.e. representing a 
date with serial number 5) or a partial application of the second
constructor (i.e. representing a function taking month and year and 
returning the date "5th month, year").

If this is the case, what would be the natural Haskell way of organizing 
the smart constructors ? Just number them as above ? Or naming them
dateFromSerialNumber, dateFromDayMonthYear ?

Or would you do it differently from the start ?

Thank you
Peter