[ghc-steering-committee] RecordDotSyntax proposal: next steps

[Simon Marlow]

On Fri, 6 Mar 2020 at 17:59, Simon Peyton Jones via ghc-steering-committee <
ghc-steering-committee at haskell.org> wrote:

> Colleagues
>
> I’m sorry to have been dragging my feet on the records proposal.   First
> there was half term holiday, and then the ICFP deadline, so I’ve been out
> of action for several weeks.
>
> It’s pretty clear that we are not going to achieve 100% consensus, so the
> right thing to do is to vote, using the single-transferrable-vote scheme
> that Joachim runs.  It’s worth striving for consensus, because the debate
> can be clarifying (and has been!).  But I don’t regard non-consensus as a
> failure.  These things are all judgement calls, and people’s judgement can
> legitimately differ.   Voting lets us nevertheless reach a conclusion.
>
> So here’s what I propose
>
>    - I’ve put up a list of choices for us to vote on here
>    <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MgovHRUUNjbuM4nM8qEe308MfbAYRh2Q8PxFHl7iY74/edit?usp=sharing>,
>    informed by our most recent email exchanges. The first thing is to ensure
>    that this list is
>       1. *Complete*: no choices that people really want are omitted.
>       2. *Clear* *and unambiguous*.  When we vote we must know exactly
>       what we are voting for!
>
> The examples are clear, however I find it hard to extrapolate from the
examples to a precise description of the changes to the syntax. What I'd
really like to see is something that tells me how the syntax would be
specified, for example ".<varid> is a new lexeme" or "record selection only
applies to tight-infix occurrences of the varsym "."". I'm not asking for a
full diff of the lexical syntax, just a sentence or two that makes it clear
enough that any of us could fill in the details.

This would let us answer questions like: C2 says that .x is illegal, yet
later we say that (.x) means (\r -> r.x). How would we reconcile those?

Cheers
Simon



>
>    1.
>
> *Can you all respond about that, including “Aye” if you think it is both
> complete and clear*.
>
>    - Once we are all satisfied, I’ll invite you to vote.  The easiest way
>    to do so might be to edit the Google doc directly, so there’s a single
>    point of reference.
>
> Please also let me know if you think we should be doing anything else.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Simon
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