[Haskell-cafe] bug in number reading?

[Henning Thielemann]

On Sun, 28 Sep 2008, Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH wrote:

> On 2008 Sep 28, at 18:42, Jason Dusek wrote:
>> Maybe I'm missing something, but this doesn't seem right...
>> 
>> :; ghc -e '10e4'
>> 
>> <interactive>:1:0:
>>   Warning: Defaulting the following constraint(s) to type `Double'
>>            `Fractional a' arising from a use of `it' at <interactive>:1:0-3
>>   In the first argument of `print', namely `it'
>>   In the expression: print it
>>   In a stmt of a 'do' expression: print it
>> 100000.0
>> it :: forall t. (Fractional t) =>
>
> Looks right to me.  Remember that the translation of that is 10 * 10^4.

Btw. is there a reason why exponential notation always requires Fractional 
not Num? I guess 10e4 is translated to 10 * 10^^4, not 10 * 10^4, but the 
latter one would be more convenient, and (^^) could be used only for 
negative exponents.