[Haskell-cafe] Extending the idea of a general Num to other types?

[Peter Verswyvelen]

Okay. Now the following might not make sense at all, but... isn't the 
abstract concept of a list just a sequence of elements (okay, with a 
whole lot of extra properties)? So couldn't we write:   do { 1;2;3;4 } 
instead of [1,2,3,4] somehow for some special "list builder" monad? And 
then do {1;2;3;4 } could be lifted to any kind of structure when you run 
it through a different builder. Ah, I guess not... I'm not familiar 
enough with monads.

Henning Thielemann wrote:
> On Sun, 2 Sep 2007, Lennart Augustsson wrote:
>
>   
>> You're right.  The list syntax is only for lists in Haskell.  It would be
>> nice if the list syntax was overloaded too.
>>     
>
> The special list syntax isn't as good, as always proposed. I have
> collected some advantages of the bare infix notation:
>  http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/List_notation
>
>
>