Wanted: warning option for usages of unary minus

[Simon Marlow]

Isaac Dupree wrote:
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> Isaac Dupree wrote:
>> Simon Marlow wrote:
>>>> I definitely think that -1# should be parsed as a single lexeme. 
>>>> Presumably it was easier at the time to do it the way it is, I don't
>>>> remember exactly.
>>>>
>>>> I'd support a warning for use of prefix negation, or alternatively you
>>>> could implement the Haskell' proposal to remove prefix negation
>>>> completely - treat the unary minus as part of a numeric literal in the
>>>> lexer only.  This would have to be optional for now, so that we can
>>>> continue to support Haskell 98 of course.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>>     Simon
>> Yes, I've been thinking about how to implement both - details will come
>> later when I have more time.  I think I have a reasonably working idea
>> of how to divide up the cases for warnings for ambiguous-looking use of
>> both infix and prefix minus, as well as actual syntax changes...
> 
> not considering warnings, just syntax:  123abc is two valid Haskell
> tokens. for example:
> \begin{code}
> main = (\n c -> print (n,c)) 123Abc
> data Abc = Abc deriving Show
> \end{code}
> prints (123,Abc).
> So does this suggest that under a negation-is-part-of-numeric-token
> regime, 123-456 should be two tokens (a positive number then a negative
> number, here), as is signum-456 ...

Yes, absolutely.

 > Presently, GHC doesn't even warn about the first thing (123abc) ^_^

and remember that while '123e 4' is 3 tokens, '123e4' is only 1.

Cheers,
	Simon