Records in Haskell

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 8:38 AM, Ian Lynagh <igloo at earth.li> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 01, 2012 at 07:58:42AM +0000, AntC wrote:
>>
>> SORF's whadyoumaycalls are at the Kind level. (I'm not opposed to them because
>> they're new-fangled, I'm opposed because I can't control the namespace.)
>
> I haven't followed everything, so please forgive me if this is a stupid
> question, but if you implement this variant of SORF:
>
>    http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Records/OverloadedRecordFields#ScopecontrolbygeneralisingtheStringtypeinHas
>
> then do you get the behaviour of SORF when using field names starting
> with a lower-case letter, and DORF when they start with an upper-case
> letter?
>
>
> Thanks
> Ian

It is close to a hack (e.g. taking over a special meaning for String)
that has been implemented in the Scratchpad II (now known as AXIOM)
system for over 3 decades.  I found it odd, this maybe for Haskell it
may have a completely different taste. If you have a copy of the AXIOM
book

    http://www.amazon.com/AXIOM-Scientific-Computation-Richard-Jenks/dp/0387978550

have a look at the end of page 71.

-- Gaby