[Haskell-cafe] Strange subtract operator behavior - and lazy naturals

[Yitzchak Gale]

I wrote:
>> Nice, lots of fun!
>> Wouldn't it be more convenient to allow them
>> to be signed?

John Meacham wrote:
> Well, a couple reasons. One is that Natural numbers are a pretty useful
> type in and of themselves, often times when used with lazy evaluation.
> The other is that it is unclear what semantics lazy signed numbers would
> have...

True. I was thinking of the sign at the beginning - which
means, essentially, the same as what you already have.
The real only differences are:

- Zero really means 0, not "0 or negative".
- In certain special cases where you happen to know that
  the result should be a certain negative number, you get that

In particular, the scrictness properties - which you have already
so carefully worked out for the case of the naturals -
do not change.

Of course, you can then easily restrict to the naturals
when you want that.

-Yitz