[Haskell-cafe] First steps in Haskell

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

| Actually, I have sometimes wished that the various interactive Haskell
| interfaces had the possibility to enter also declarations interactively

GHCi does.

ghci>  let f x = "hello"
ghci> f True
True

But there's no editor -- it's strictly a one-line definition

Simon


| -----Original Message-----
| From: Bjorn Lisper [mailto:lisper at it.kth.se]
| Sent: 19 December 2005 13:06
| To: Simon Peyton-Jones
| Cc: wolfgang at jeltsch.net; haskell-cafe at haskell.org
| Subject: Re: [Haskell-cafe] First steps in Haskell
| 
| Simon P-J:
| >Daniel is right, by definition.  He is a new user.  He had difficulty.
| >That much is incontrovertible.
| >
| >While he may seem unusual, perhaps he is only unusual in that he's told
| >us about his experience rather than trying Perl instead.  For which,
| >much thanks, Daniel!
| 
| Actually, I have sometimes wished that the various interactive Haskell
| interfaces had the possibility to enter also declarations interactively, as
| Daniel originally asked for. Lisp interpreters often support this to some
| extent, so it is not out of line for a newcomer to expect it also for
| Haskell. I often use hugs as a calculator, and sometimes it would be very
| convenient to be able to make one or a few short declarations while making
| some interactive calculations. It can be quite tedious to create and edit a
| source code file on the side and then load it, when all you want is a short
| declaration or two.  Would it be that complex to have an interactive
| interface enter a "declarations mode" when it sees a declaration coming, and
| then let it create, compile and load a temporary module when the declaration
| is finished?
| 
| Björn Lisper