[Haskell-cafe] generalize RecordPuns and RecordWildCards to work with qualified names?

[Evan Laforge]

> | Even is suggesting that instead of reporting an error, in the second
> | case we could use the translation:
> |
> |   f (A.A { A.a }) = a   -->   f (A.A { A.a = a })
> |
> | (i.e., when punning occurs with a qualified name, use just the
> | unqualified part of the name in the pattern)
>
> Yes, that'd be possible.   But it seems debatable -- it doesn't *look* as if the pattern (A.A { A.a }) binds 'a' -- and it seems even less desirable in record construction and update.  To be concrete, would you expect these to work too?
>
>  g a = A.A { A.a }     -->    g a = A.A { A.a = a }
>  h x a = x { A.a }     -->    h x a = a { A.a = a }

Oh, I didn't realize that record punning included construction as
well.  Yeah, that's a little funky looking.  I don't mind seeing the
binding form and I think a new reader could figure it out without too
much trouble but I would be a little confused by the construction form
and think a new reader would also be confused.

> With -XDisambiguateRecordFields you could say
>
>  g a = A.A { a }
>
> which seems better.  (But there's no help for record update, since we don’t know which data constructor is involved.)

I didn't know about DisambiguateRecordFields!  Looks like that also
makes the wildcard work like I want it to.

The ghc docs for DisambiguateRecordFields don't make this very clear
to me... it talks about disambiguating names in scope, but if I say
"R.R { a = val}" I wouldn't expect it to "disambiguate" 'a', which is
not in scope at all, to 'R.a' which looks like a completely different
name.  Rereading the paragraph at 7.3.11 I'm still surprised this
works.  Maybe add something like:

... preceeding docs ...

This also means that if you use qualified imports you can still use
unqualified field names.  E.g. in the pattern @(R.R { a = a_val })@,
@a@ will be disambiguated to @R.a@, even if @R@ is imported qualified.

I gather we're not supposed to call them "records" anymore, they're
supposed to be something I forget now, but the rest of the ghc docs
says records, so...

> So my current conclusion is: improve the error message, perhaps suggesting the flag -XDismabiguateRecordFields, but don't add the change you suggest.
>
> Comments?

Sounds good to me.  I'll try adding DisambiguateRecordFields and try
out the new punning, thanks!