Avoiding "No explicit method ..." warnings

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

| This seems to be a lot of mechanism for questionable benefit.  A
simpler and cleaner
| approach, IMHO, is the following:

I rather agree.

One other idea though.  Suppose you say

    class ComplicatedClass x where
	_simpleTitleFn :: x -> String
	muchMoreComplicatedTitleFn :: extra arguments -> x -> IO ...

In general GHC doesn't report "warning unused" for variables whose name
begin with an underscore.  In the case of class methods, I don't think
it suppresses the warning, but that would be an easy change to make.
Indeed, it would arguably be more consistent to do so anyway

> #-}) which compiles exactly as normal except that (1) no warning is=20
> given for instances which don't define it; (2) a warning is given=20
> whenever anyone outside the class declaration *uses* simpleTitleFn.

The "_" idea would achieve (1).  You could get (2) by not exporting the
"_" method from the module defining ComplicatedClasss.

How would that be?

Simon