[Haskell-cafe] Avoiding name collisions by using value spaces instead of modules

[Brian Hulley]

Cale Gibbard wrote:
> <snip>

Thanks for the illustration - I see another advantage with type classes is 
that you only need to write the type signature once (in the class 
declaration) instead of before each instance binding.

> Secondly, if the functions are really different, and you never plan to
> use them polymorphically, why the heck would you want to call them the
> same thing? That's just confusing to anyone that has to read the code
> later.

For example, Data.Map declares:

insert :: Ord k => k -> a -> Map k a -> Map k a

whereas Data.Set declares:

insert :: Ord a => a -> Set a -> Set a

This is an example where type classes can't be applied even though the 
functions in a sense do the same thing. My system would solve this problem, 
by allowing the programmer to type d = insert a b c and have the type 
inference algorithm work out that Data.Map.insert was meant, as long as c or 
d has been typed as Map p q.

But perhaps there is a way to get the signature for Data.Map.insert into the 
same form as that of Data.Set.insert?

Regards, Brian.