[Haskell-cafe] First steps in Haskell

[Wolfgang Jeltsch]

Am Sonntag, 18. Dezember 2005 17:25 schrieb Daniel Carrera:
> [...]

> This is a real problem for Haskell. I expect that a lot of people try
> Haskell and give up because they can't even write the simplest function.

Hello Daniel,

honestly, I have to say that during my years with Haskell, this seems to be 
the first time that I see somebody trying to enter a Haskell program via the 
command line of an interactive environment.  So I suppose that it's not "a 
lot of people" who experience the problems you do.

> It's hard not to be put off by this. I love the theory behind Haskell,
> but the practice of it seems to be a real problem.

Did you have a look at the Hugs or GHCi documentation?  I'm very sure, it will 
tell you that what you may enter at the command line are (merely) expressions 
to evaluate and special commands like :t for displaying the type of an 
expression, and that the Haskell declarations (normally) have to be read from 
a file.

> I hope someone will show me how to make this program work. Even better,
> I hope someone will fix the compilers and interpreters if they need
> fixing, or fix the documentation if that's what needs fixing.

I suppose that neither the compilers and interpreters nor the documentation 
need(s) fixing, although I might be wrong with the documentation.

> Best,
> Daniel.

Best wishes,
Wolfgang