[Haskell-cafe] Re: ANNOUNCE: Utrecht Haskell Compiler (UHC) -- first release

Lennart Augustsson lennart at augustsson.net
Thu Apr 23 05:02:45 EDT 2009


On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 6:30 AM, Richard O'Keefe <ok at cs.otago.ac.nz> wrote:
>  - a somewhat bogus claim about how much of the library you need to
>   know how to use it (of COURSE you need to know about integers in
>   order to use an integer operation, what's so bad about that?)
>  - the claim that + doesn't mean + (this is really an argument about
>   the scope of + and could have been dealt with by ruling that n+k
>   is only available when the version of + in scope is the one from
>   the Prelude)

What's bogus about that claim?  Then n+k patterns have type (Integral
a) => a, so you need to know about type classes and Integral.

Even if it's listed as a reason, you rest assure that the Haskell'
committee did consider how widespread the use of n+k was before
removing it.  Of course, this can only be an educated guess.

Of course, n+k will be missed by Haskell obfuscators.  I mean, what
will we do without
  (+) + 1 + 1 = (+)
?

    -- Lennart


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