Finalizers 2: Bayou Justice (and Weak pointers to boot...)

[John Meacham]

On Mon, Oct 14, 2002 at 11:07:27AM +0100, Malcolm Wallace wrote:
> > and if we are adding things to the FFI spec, how about the empty data
> > declaration? it is painfully simple to implement and would make FFI code
> > a lot cleaner as it tends to depend heavily on placeholder types..
> 
> Hugs and ghc already have it (AFAIK).  I recently added it to nhc98.
> Do you think it should become a formal part of the FFI standard?  Or
> is it best left as another "common" extension of Haskell'98 that just
> happens to be implemented everywhere?

yeah, I would like to see the extension in the FFI, because it will
probably never make it in anywhere else and it makes FFI code so much
cleaner/more readable. I'd almost like to see it considered a 'misprint'
in the haskell report and fixed there, but I'd settle for the FFI.
Since every compiler supports it, we should put it in, rather then
encourage everyone to write technically 'non-portable' code, by
providing the perfect use for it in the FFI but not the extension
itself.
	John

-- 
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John Meacham - California Institute of Technology, Alum. - john at foo.net
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