Proposals for changes to searching behaviour

[Simon Marlow]

> The suggested changes sound hard to understand and to implement
> consistently in all compilers.  I lean towards leaving the spec as it
> is.

Hmm, I'm not sure why you say these changes are hard to understand.
Which part(s) in particular do you find difficult? =20

Hugs already implements the first suggestion.

> IIRC, the current Hugs semantics is a complex balancing act intended
> to achieve backward compatability and implement module paths at the
> same time.  I'd prefer to see everyone switch over to the new way so
> that we can drop old features.

Johan and I discussed the current search semantics when it was
implemented in Hugs, so that we could make GHC(i) and Hugs agree.  I
believe they currently agree on all but the point I made in my first
suggestion.

There were two features in Hugs that could be considered "backwards
compatibility": Hugs allowed a module M to be placed in the file M (no
extension), and Hugs allowed an import declaration to give a filename
rather than a module name.  I thought both these features were gone, but
I just checked and the first seems to be still present in the Hugs Nov
2002 release.

Cheers,
	Simon