Fixing Parser.y for correct infix type synonyms

[Johan Glimming]

Hi

I am looking into the ghc source code for the first time in order to 
see if I can understand why type synonyms are not correctly parsed with 
the ghc extension for infix :-*-: etc.

I note that the following is present in the file Parser.y in 
ghc-6.4.20050216/ghc/compiler/parser and I assume it here ghc is 
parsing the type declarations?

tycl_decl :: { LTyClDecl RdrName }
         : 'type' syn_hdr '=' ctype
                 -- Note ctype, not sigtype.
                 -- We allow an explicit for-all but we don't insert one
                 -- in   type Foo a = (b,b)
                 -- Instead we just say b is out of scope
                 { sL (comb2 $1 $>) $ let (tc,tvs) = $2 in TySynonym tc 
tvs $4 }

on the next line happy is probably given instructions how to parse data 
declarations?

         | 'data' tycl_hdr constrs deriving
                 { L (comb4 $1 $2 $3 $4)
                     (mkTyData DataType $2 Nothing (reverse (unLoc $3)) 
(unLoc $4)) }

Now, can someone explain what happens here, e.g. what is the difference 
between parsing of data and type synonyms?

I guess (!) that the handling of infixes is merely an issue in the 
parser, and would not affect much else in ghc?

Johan Glimming.