modules, classes, instances

[David Feuer]

Well, I've been doing some more stupid thinking, and I've decided that I
am not satisfied with the module system in haskell, or the way it deals
with namespaces.  It seems to me that there are four kinds of things
that need to be dealt with: classes, instances, types, values, and
possibly some kind of ML-style structures/functors.

I see no good reason not to treat a class declaration similarly to the
way Haskell treats modules.  For example, if I have a class

class A x where
	f1::...
	f2::...


I would like to access the functions by writing
A.f1, A.f2, etc.  There should, however, be some way to unqualify the
names, the way ML allows structures to be opened.

Of course, this can be done in Haskell by putting the class declaration
inside a module, but doing so can be annoying, and I think this style
clearly attaches the method to the class it belongs to.  It thereby lets
you have a List l=>List.empty::l  and also a Bag b=>Bag.empty::b
automatically.

Then there are types and instance declarations.  I have the strange
feeling that they go together.  So I'm thinking it might be good to have
some kind of type/instance module that can export types and instances. 
I can't understand why it is that instance declarations can't contain
nested declarations other than the required ones.  I think it would be
nice if they could contain other declarations, as modules can.  Also,
instances could be imported (not just as part of a module, but
separately)

ML-style structures/functors.  For everything else.

Finally:  I want nested modules!!!  They probably couldn't be compiled
separately, but they'd provide some namespace control.

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