Show with Strings

[Derek Elkins]

On Mon, 4 Aug 2003 10:01:50 +0000
"Thomas L. Bevan" <thomas_bevan@toll.com.au> wrote:

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> Is there any reason why 
>  show :: String -> String 
> is not equivalent to 'id' ?

Because I believe the intent (the Report may make some mention of this)
is that read . show should be id.  Either way, you aren't strongly
exercising the function.  What about show "\"" which is """ or show
"\0\r\n" and other such examples? This wouldn't be the right result for
many uses.

> At the moment,
> 
> show "one" = "\"one\""
> 
> which leads to problems because it often
> requires String to be treated as a special case,
> rather than just a member of Show.
> 
> Tom

Having show :: String -> String be id would be making a special case the
other way.  Perhaps the sensible thing to do is make your own class say
Display, e.g.

class Display a where
    display :: a -> String

This would be a class for displaying values rather than something more
akin to textual serialization that Show is.  You can go further and make
a pretty printing class, or a less flexibly, but a little more
conveniently is

class Show a => Display a where
    display :: a -> String
    display = show

So that you can just have,
instance Display Bool
instance Display Int, etc.
with 
instance Display String where
    display = id