[Haskell-cafe] Re: Positive integers

[John Meacham]

On Fri, Mar 24, 2006 at 06:54:54PM +0000, Aaron Denney wrote:
> > Without breaking compatibility?
> > But class instances become invalid if the hierarchy is modified.
> 
> No, compatibility will be broken.  Hopefully not for most uses -- I
> don't think most people define new instances, and those that do will be
> able to do so more reasonably, so hopefully wouldn't mind.

The problem isn't with creating instances, it is with using the classes
at all.

well, in interfaces you are going to end up with some specific class or
another concretely mentioned in your type signatures, which means you
can't interact with code that only knows about the alternate class. like

genericLength :: Integral a => [b] -> a

if you have a different 'Integral' you can't call genericLength with it,
or anything built up on genericLength. basically there would be no way
for 'new' and 'old' polymorphic code to interact. 

the inability to evolve the class hierarchy is a serious issue, enough
that it very well could be impractical for haskell' unless something
like class aliases were widely adopted.

        John


-- 
John Meacham - ⑆repetae.net⑆john⑈