[Haskell-cafe] Renaming constructors for readability

Dougal Stanton ithika at gmail.com
Tue Nov 13 17:29:35 EST 2007


I wonder, is there an equivalent of the 'type' keyword for
constructors? An example:



-- create a pseudo-C pointer type
-- which can point to a value or a
-- null.
type Pointer a = Maybe a

-- int a = 3;
-- int *pa = &a;
ampersand :: t -> Pointer t
ampersand a = Just a

-- int b = *pa.
star :: Pointer a -> a
star (Just a) = a
-- note this function behaves
-- in an 'authentic' fashion ;-)


To really complete the illusion it would be nice to replace the names
Just and Nothing with PointerTo and Null. Then the constructors would
really mean something. Is there a solution?

-- 
Dougal Stanton
dougal at dougalstanton.net // http://www.dougalstanton.net


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