[Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] View patterns in GHC: Request for feedback

[ChrisK]

Jon Fairbairn wrote:
> I currently only get f :: [t] -> something, so if I later
> discover that I need to change the input representation to
> be more efficient than lists, I have to rewrite f. Wouldn't
> it be so much nicer if I could simply add a declaration
> 
>> f:: Stream s => s t -> something
> 
> and get a function that works on anything in the Stream
> class?
> 
> The core of the idea would be to allow classes to include
> constructors (and associated destructors) so the definition
> of Stream would include something for ":" and "[]" and their
> inverses, though I've no real idea of the details; can
> anyone come up with a plan?

I had been avoiding adding my two cents, but I must object to this.

Because this is starting to sound like one of the maddening things about C++.

Namely, the automatic implicit casting conversions of classes via their single 
argument constructors.  This is one of the (several) things that makes reading 
and understanding a function or method call in C++ incredibly difficult.

What if the 'f' in the quoted message above is itself part of a type class. 
Then one has to decide which instance 'f' is being called and what 
constructors/destructors are being called to view the 's t' parameter as the 
correct concrete type.  That way lies madness.

Any magical view logic is dangerous in this respect.  Thus I would probably not 
want any special implicit (class View a b) or (call View a b | a -> b), etc.

At least the proposal that (=> _) is (-> Just _) makes you change the syntax 
instead of overloading (->).

-- 
Chris