[Haskell-cafe] Re: suggestion: add a .ehs file type

[Alex Young]

Alex Jacobson wrote:
> My original point (refined) was that I'd like a file extension (.ehs) 
> that defaults to including all extensions that don't change the meaning 
> of a .hs program but that may cause a small subset of them not to 
> compile (e.g. ones that use forall as a type variable, foreign as a 
> function, or 'd' as the result value of a list comprehension)
> 
> This does not seem like a major change, does not break any existing 
> code, and has the advantage of making it really obvious when people are 
> going beyond haskell98.
> 

It'll break all sorts of things when .ehs has to get merged into .hs the
next time this conversation comes around, unless it's guaranteed that
all .hs processors will eventually be upgraded to cope with .ehs
semantics.  I don't think anyone's arguing for that...

-- 
Alex

> -Alex-
> 
> Simon Marlow wrote:
>> I see, all you're saying is you'd like the default to be different.
>>
>> (That's not the same as saying "Extensions that change syntax are 
>> effectively declared by the use of that syntax", which is what you 
>> said earlier, BTW.)
>>
>> Well, we could change the default.  I don't think it's a great idea 
>> personally - I think we should default to compiling whatever is the 
>> most recent standard, i.e. Haskell 98.  But you're arguing that the 
>> proportion of Haskell 98 code that would fail to compile is relatively 
>> small; that might well be true.  This isn't a decision we could take 
>> lightly, though.
>>
>> Furthermore, it's only something we could change in 6.10, by which 
>> time it is likely that we'll have a clearer idea of what Haskell' is, 
>> so there might well be a -fhaskell-prime flag (or it might even be the 
>> default).
>>
>> Cheers,
>>     Simon
>>
>> Alex Jacobson wrote:
>>>
>>> Simon, I think we've been trying to be too clever...
>>>
>>> The simple question is: for a given extension, what is the risk of 
>>> leaving it turned on by default?
>>>
>>> Clearly we don't want extensions turned on that causes code to 
>>> compile but with a different meaning.  We may not want extensions 
>>> turned on that cause most reasonable code not to compile.
>>>
>>> But I would say neither risk is significant in the case of most 
>>> extensions.  To use your examples:
>>>
>>> * FFI doesn't not cause h98 code to compile to a different meaning.  
>>> The worst case is that code that uses 'foreign' as a function name 
>>> doesn't compile.  That seems okay in that more code probably uses FFI 
>>> than uses foreign as a function name and the user can apply a 
>>> language pragma to turn it off if really desired.
>>>
>>> * Existential types won't cause h98 code to compile with a different 
>>> meaning.  The worst case is that code that uses 'forall' as a type 
>>> variable won't compile.  That seems ok....
>>>
>>> * TemplateHaskell also not compatible with h98.  The worst case is 
>>> the loss "[d|" in list comprehensions.
>>>
>>> * MagicHash: Does not appear in the ToC or the Index of the user's 
>>> guide so should probably be turned off.  I have no idea what it does.
>>>
>>> Note, in all cases where the extension is turned on by default, there 
>>> should be a language pragma to turn it off.
>>>
>>>
>>> -Alex-
>>>
>>> Simon Marlow wrote:
>>>> Alex Jacobson wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Simon, from what I can tell, with GHC 6.8.1, use of foreign as a 
>>>>> function name or forall as a type variable or leaving out a space 
>>>>> in a list-comprehension doesn't "parse differently" when the 
>>>>> relevant extensions are enabled, it causes a parse error.
>>>>  >
>>>>> Extensions allow the same code to parse but with different meanings 
>>>>> need to be declared explicitly.  But, extensions that are obvious 
>>>>> from syntax should be allowed to be declared simply from the use of 
>>>>> that syntax.
>>>>
>>>> So for the first example I gave,
>>>>
>>>> f x y = x 3# y
>>>>
>>>> the "MagicHash" extension is one that you'd require to be explicitly 
>>>> declared, because the expression parses both with and without the 
>>>> extension.
>>>>
>>>> Now, Let's take the Template Haskell example:
>>>>
>>>> f x = [d|d<-xs]
>>>>
>>>> So this is valid Haskell 98, but invalid H98+TH.  You would 
>>>> therefore like this example to parse unambiguously as H98, correct?  
>>>> But in order to do that, our parser would need arbitrary lookahead: 
>>>> it can't tell whether the expression is legal H98+TH until it gets 
>>>> to the '<-' in this case. Certainly it's possible to implement this 
>>>> using a backtracking parser, but Haskell is supposed to be parsable 
>>>> with a shift-reduce parser such as the one GHC uses.  Or we could 
>>>> try parsing the whole module with various combinations of extensions 
>>>> turned on or off, but I'm sure you can see the problems with that.
>>>>
>>>> So basically the problem is that you need a parser that parses a 
>>>> strict superset of Haskell98 - and that's hard to achieve.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>>     Simon
>>>>
>>>>> I am not taking a position here on the merits of any extensions.
>>>>>
>>>>> -Alex-
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Simon Marlow wrote:
>>>>>> Alex Jacobson wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Extensions that change syntax are effectively declared by the use 
>>>>>>> of that syntax.  If you can parse the source, then you know which 
>>>>>>> extensions it uses.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I thought we'd already established that this isn't possible.  Here 
>>>>>> are some code fragments that parse differently depending on which 
>>>>>> extensions are enabled:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> f x y = x 3# y
>>>>>>
>>>>>> f x = [d|d<-xs]
>>>>>>
>>>>>> foreign x = x
>>>>>>
>>>>>> f :: forall -> forall -> forall
>>>>>>
>>>>>> You could argue that these syntax extensions are therefore badly 
>>>>>> designed, but that's a separate discussion.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>>>     Simon
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> -Alex-
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Duncan Coutts wrote:
>>>>>>>> On Fri, 2007-11-23 at 16:26 +0100, Wolfgang Jeltsch wrote:
>>>>>>>>> Am Freitag, 23. November 2007 03:37 schrieben Sie:
>>>>>>>>>> On Fri, 2007-11-23 at 01:50 +0100, Wolfgang Jeltsch wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>> Dont’t just think in terms of single modules.  If I have a 
>>>>>>>>>>> Cabal package,
>>>>>>>>>>> I can declare used extensions in the Cabal file.  A user can 
>>>>>>>>>>> decide not
>>>>>>>>>>> to start building at all if he/she sees that the package uses an
>>>>>>>>>>> extension unsupported by the compiler.
>>>>>>>>>> Indeed. In theory Cabal checks all the extensions declared to 
>>>>>>>>>> be used by
>>>>>>>>>> the package are supported by the selected compiler. In 
>>>>>>>>>> practise I'm not
>>>>>>>>>> sure how well it does this or what kind of error message we get.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> The problem is, of course, that you are not forced to specify 
>>>>>>>>> all used extensions in the Cabal file since you can still use 
>>>>>>>>> language pragmas.  Sometimes it is even desirable to use 
>>>>>>>>> LANGUAGE pragmas instead of information in the Cabal file.  For 
>>>>>>>>> example, even if some modules use undecidable instances, I 
>>>>>>>>> might not want all modules of the package to be compiled with 
>>>>>>>>> -XUndecidableInstances since this could hide problems with my 
>>>>>>>>> class structure.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Our tentative plan there is to separate the extensions field 
>>>>>>>> into those
>>>>>>>> used in some module, and those applied by cabal to every module. 
>>>>>>>> So that
>>>>>>>> would allow you to specify a feature in one file but not all, while
>>>>>>>> still declaring to the outside world that the package uses the 
>>>>>>>> feature.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> As for enforcing that, that may come almost for free when we get
>>>>>>>> dependency chasing as we'll be looking for imports anyway. It 
>>>>>>>> shouldn't
>>>>>>>> be much harder to look for language pragmas too.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Duncan
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>>>> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users
>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>
>>>
> 
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