instance {Semigroup, Monoid} (Bag a) ?

[Ben Gamari]

Richard Eisenberg <rae at richarde.dev> writes:

> Hi devs,
>
> In the work on simplifying the error-message infrastructure (heavy lifting by Alfredo, in cc), I've been tempted (twice!) to add
>
>> instance Semigroup (Bag a) where
>>   (<>) = unionBags
>> 
>> instance Monoid (Bag a) where
>>   mempty = emptyBag
>
> to GHC.Data.Bag.
>
> The downside to writing these is that users might be tempted to write
> e.g. mempty instead of emptyBag, while the latter gives more
> information to readers and induces less manual type inference (to a
> human reader). The upside is that it means Bags work well with
> Monoid-oriented functions, like foldMap.
>
> I favor adding them, and slipped them into !5509 (a big commit with
> lots of other stuff). Alfredo rightly wondered whether this decision
> deserved more scrutiny, and so I'm asking the question here.
>
My sense is that adding the instances is a Good Thing. However, I do
think that we probably ought to refrain from using (<>) and mempty where
more specific functions would do. Adding a lint would be one way to
accomplish this. Hiding the functions from GhcPrelude would be another.

Cheers,

- Ben


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