Record syntax for pattern synonyms

[Matthew Pickering]

Thank you for your comments Richard.


> I'm assuming `pattern Foo{bar, baz} = (bar, baz)` from the wiki page, without any further pattern type signature. This example then looks straightforward to me -- I feel I'm missing the subtlety. `foo` would get the type `(a,b) -> (b,b)` and would be roughly equivalent to `foo a@(bar, baz) = case a of (_, baz2) -> (baz, baz2)`. The case statement and baz2 is necessary just to provide a predictable desugaring of record updates; handwritten code should clearly be more succinct.

This is how I imagined it to work.

> This would desugar to `foo x = case x of Just _ -> Just 5`. I'm not sure about pattern exhaustiveness warnings, but I would expect such a record update to be partial. The partiality of record updates has been surprising in the past, but I don't think adding pattern synonyms to the mix should change that.

Yes, I agree.

> I would like to keep record updates for the same reasons you appear to. I will warn that they are quite hard to work with, though! About 220 lines of dense code (including comments) are necessary to type-check regular old record updates. This isn't to scare you off, but to have you suitably forewarned and forearmed.

I consider myself warned!


> What do you mean here? Without checking, I assumed that the x in `x { ... }` had to be a variable. But this is wrong! See 3.15.3 of the Haskell 2010 report (https://www.haskell.org/onlinereport/haskell2010/haskellch3.html#x8-490003.15). So I think it's already generalized.

Good news. This should simplify the implementation.

>
> Many thanks for taking this on!
> Richard
>