Records in Haskell

[Greg Weber]

On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 2:12 PM, Donn Cave <donn at avvanta.com> wrote:

> Quoth Greg Weber <greg at gregweber.info>,
> ...
> > Many of the built-in record proposals seem more ambitious (create a new
> > record from an existing one, generalize in some other direction). More
> > power or generalization could be very useful, but it can wait for later -
> > Haskell's records are glaringly bad because they lack name-spacing.
> >
> > I think one of the problems being faced with improving records is a false
> > choice between a quick but hacky library desugaring or a major
> "Extensible"
> > records built into the compiler. What I am proposing is that (unless
> > someone proposes a great desugaring solution) we make it the immediate
> goal
> > to have records built into the compiler, but done in the simplest
> (perhaps
> > least "Extensible") way that just accomplishes name-spacing.
>
> It's sure easy to imagine something like that happening, in principle,
> but ... are you saying that extensibility specifically has been a major
> issue?  Could be, I haven't been paying so much attention.
>

Yes, I believe it is common knowledge and stated in many places that the
community cannot decide on the best *extensible* record system.
http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/GHC:FAQ#Extensible_Records


> Wouldn't extensibility more or less come along with row polymorphism?
> I mean, my understanding of the term is that an expression that
> instantiates a particular record field, can incorporate a record lacking
> that field, which seems to me to be implicit in row polymorphism anyway.
> I would think row polymorphism is a must-have.
>

Perhaps if you want *extensible* records. If you would like to make some
progress with records in the near future rather than keeping records in
limbo, I think we really need to give up for the moment on any higher form
of abstraction than straight-forward name-spacing.


> If you're interested in looking at old, Haskell-related record systems,
> also see O'Haskell.
>

I am interested in any potential solution. You could link to it on the
ExtensibleRecords wiki page and explain it a bit for future
reference. O'Haskell seems to be very much concerned with being as
extensible as possible - to the point of trying to do OO in Haskell.

Greg Weber


>        Donn
>
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