[Haskell-cafe] if-then-else as rebindable syntax (was Re: Why does Haskell have the if-then-else syntax?)

[Paul Hudak]

I'm all for making Haskell easy for beginners, but as Simon points out, 
this change shouldn't really affect them.  Since I'm also a fan of using 
Haskell as the host for embedded DSL's, I think this would be a good 
addition, since it provides more flexibility with the syntax.

  -Paul

Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:

>Just to be clear, to get rebindable syntax in GHC today, you have to ask
>for it explicitly, via
>	-fno-implicit-prelude
>
>If you use that flag, you'd better know what it means.  It already means
>that do-notation uses whatever (>>) and (>>=) are in scope, not
>Control.Monad.(>>) etc.  This if-thing is just another example.
>
>No beginner will encounter this complication; they'd have to ask for it.
>
>Simon
>  
>