[Haskell-cafe] language proposal: ad-hoc overloading

[Marc Weber]

On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 11:21:44AM -0700, Ryan Ingram wrote:
> [..]
> Any thoughts?
>   -- ryan
Nice problem, nice idea..
Maybe the time is better spend on IDEs than extending the (or all)
compilers..

Right now I've something like this in my vim script files:

function! vl#dev#haskell#qffixfixable#AddMissingExtensions()
  let addExt=''
  let alreadyAsked = {}
  for qfitem in reverse(getqflist())
    let match = matchstr(qfitem['text']
      \ , '(use -X\zs[^)]*\ze)\|(-X\zs[^ ]*\ze permits this)\|(Use \zs[^ ]*\ze to lift this restriction)'
      \  .'\|(Use -X\zs[^ ]*\ze to allow operators in types)'
      \  .'\|(Use -X\zs[^ ]*\ze to suppress this message)'
      \  .'\|Use -X\zs[^ ]*\ze if you want to disable this'
      \  .'\|Use -X\zs[^ ]*\ze to permit this'
      \  .'\|(Use -X\zs[^ ]*\ze to allow multi-parameter classes)'
      \  .'\|([Uu]se -X\zs[^ ]*\ze)'
      \  .'\|or use \zs[^ ]*\ze'
      \  .'\|(Use \zs[^ ]*\ze to permit this)'
      \  .'\|Use -X\zs[^ ]*\ze to permit it'
      \  .'\|Use -X\zs[^ ]*\ze if you want to allow more.)'
      \ )
    let replace = {
    \ '-fno-monomorphism-restriction'  : 'NoMonomorphismRestriction'
    \ , '-fallow-undecidable-instances' : 'UndecidableInstances'
    \ }
    let match = get(replace, match, match)
    if match != ''
      let addExt = match
    endif
getting many information out of error message asking me wether I want to
add the used extension to the {#- LANGUAGE .. #-} pragma.

So what about enhancing ghc so that it prints a message such as

============= hs  file ===============================================
import qualified Data.Set as S
import qualified Data.Map as M
[..]

============= error message ==========================================
file.hs: line col: not in scope foo. Maybe you meant 
        M.empty 
        or S.empty

or without qualified

file.hs: line col: ambiguous occurence of empty, Maybe you meant
        M.empty 
        or S.empty

then it woulde be easy to ask the editor to do the right thing, give you
a choice ?

I'd say this is not as perfect as your proposal, but it can be
implemented much more easily.

Sincerly
Marc Weber