the Word type

[Manuel M T Chakravarty]

Ross Paterson <ross@soi.city.ac.uk> wrote,

> On Fri, Apr 11, 2003 at 11:08:15AM +0100, Simon Marlow wrote:
> > Alastair wrote:
> > > I've argued for its complete removal from the libraries because the
> > > vast majority of the code written with it will be non-portable.  I
> > > think the counter-argument was that some portable usages are possible
> > > with one of Chris Okasaki's data structures being an example.
> > > 
> > > So, at least for now, it remains alive and well in the Hugs code in
> > > the interests of GHC-compatability and backwards-compatability.
> > > 
> > > Hopefully the comments in the Hugs source code (which were probably
> > > added by me) match the above.
> > 
> > I think it's there for symmetry, not much else.  Word suffers from the
> > same problems as Int, so while we have one we might as well have the
> > other.
> 
> OK, the question is whether Hugs should provide it with a full set of
> instances, including Storable, and allow it as a foreign type.

I think, Hugs should *not* provide it *without* requiring
the user to import a library that is clearly marked as
non-protable.

Cheers,
Manuel