Primitive types and Prelude shenanigans

[William Lee Irwin III]

On Fri, Feb 16, 2001 at 05:14:14PM +1100, Fergus Henderson wrote:
> I disagree about the reasonableness of many of your assumptions ;-)

Great! =)

On 15-Feb-2001, William Lee Irwin III <wli@holomorphy.com> wrote:
>> 	(1) lists are largely untouchable

On Fri, Feb 16, 2001 at 05:14:14PM +1100, Fergus Henderson wrote:
> I want to be able to write a Prelude that has lists as a strict data
> type, rather than a lazy data type.

Hmm, sounds like infinite lists might have trouble there, but I hereby
cast out that assumption.

On 15-Feb-2001, William Lee Irwin III <wli@holomorphy.com> wrote:
>> 	(4) I/O libs will probably not be toyed with much (monads are good!)
>> 	(5) logical values will either be a monotype or a pointed set class
>> 		(may be too much to support more than a monotype)

On Fri, Feb 16, 2001 at 05:14:14PM +1100, Fergus Henderson wrote:
> I think that that replacing the I/O libs is likely to be a much more
> useful and realistic proposition than replacing the boolean type.

I won't pretend for an instant that replacing the Boolean type will
be remotely useful to more than a handful of people.

On 15-Feb-2001, William Lee Irwin III <wli@holomorphy.com> wrote:
>> 	(9) probably no one will try to alter application syntax to operate
>> 		on things like instances of class Applicable

On Fri, Feb 16, 2001 at 05:14:14PM +1100, Fergus Henderson wrote:
> That's a separate issue; you're talking here about a language
> extension, not just a new Prelude.

I'm not sure one would have to go that far (though I'm willing to be
convinced), but either way, we need not concern ourselves.

On 15-Feb-2001, William Lee Irwin III <wli@holomorphy.com> wrote:
>> 	(10) the vast majority of the prelude changes desirable to support
>> 		will have to do with the numeric hierarchy

On Fri, Feb 16, 2001 at 05:14:14PM +1100, Fergus Henderson wrote:
> s/numeric hierarchy/class hierarchy/

I suppose I was trying to narrow it down as far as possible, but if
people really are touching every place in the class hierarchy, then
I can't do better than that.


Cheers,
Bill