Template Haskell pattern quotations

[Sebastian Fischer]

On Feb 4, 2010, at 8:58 AM, Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:

> Unless I have a sudden revelation I don't expect to implement  
> pattern splices anytime soon.
>
> On the other hand, pattern *quasiquotes* are fine; they are run by  
> the renamer before scope analysis is done.  So you can certainly say
> 	f [qq| ...blah.. |] = ...g...

If I understand Brad correctly, then what he needs is what he called  
pattern quotation rather than splicing.

He can write

     [e|True|]  instead of  conE (mkName "True")

to implement the  Exp  parser of his quasi quoter but he cannot write

     [p|True|]  instead of  conP (mkName "True")

to implement his  Pat  parser because GHC tells him that "Tempate  
Haskell pattern brackets are not supported yet".

My impression is that the problems with pattern splicing are not  
affected by support for pattern brackets. We can define a quasi  
quoter  qq  to implement

     id :: a -> a
     id [$qq|x|] = x

independently of whether we use pattern brackets in its definition or  
not. Or am I missing something?

Is there a problem with adding support for pattern brackets on the  
right-hand side of function definitions in order to simplify the  
definition of quasi quoters?

Sebastian


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