Overlapping, undecidable, incoherent -- or worse?

[André Pang]

On 21/05/2004, at 8:06 AM, MR K P SCHUPKE wrote:

>> I pointed out that the type system _may already_ not terminate
>
> I agree, I have made it not terminate myself with 
> undecidable-instances,
> I also think prolog style backtacking would be a good idea...

For what it's worth, I'll AOL this ("me too").  I know that for the 
area of Haskell I'm exploring (integrating it with OO languages), 
putting backtracking into the type system would instantly enable us 
solve some significant problems.

There are other people besides me who would like it too (e.g. Brandon 
Michael Moore, and of course, Alex), so I think it's a feature which 
would be welcome.  As always though, it's really a question of whether 
the time and extra complexity in the compiler is worth the trade-off.  
(My vote would be yes, oddly enough :-).


-- 
% Andre Pang : trust.in.love.to.save