extent strings

[Fergus Henderson]

On 14-May-2001, Alastair Reid <reid at cs.utah.edu> wrote:
> 
> As the extent strings acquire more structure, I'm starting to wonder
> if encoding the information in strings is the right approach.

Yeah, I don't really like that approach much.

> What's
> the advantage of putting the information in a string?
>
> 1) All Haskell parsers will be able to read any ffi-ified code even
>    if they don't support the language binding the ffi supports.
> 
>    But what does this achieve if the compiler backend doesn't support
>    that ffi?

This is useful for tools that parse Haskell source code but which
are not compilers -- e.g. documentation generators.

-- 
Fergus Henderson <fjh at cs.mu.oz.au>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
                                    |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>  |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.