[Haskell-cafe] Status of TypeDirectedNameResolution proposal?

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

| The proposal has this sentence, apparently in reference to using
| qualified imports: "This is sufficient, but it is just sufficiently
| inconvenient that people don't use it much."  Does this mean qualified
| imports? 

I clarified.

| One thing I'd really like that this would provide is shorter record
| selection.  "b.color" is a lot nicer than "Button.btn_color b".  Or
| would it?  It seems like under a TDNR scheme to be able to write
| "b.color" I'd have to either import "color" explicitly or go over to
| the unqualified import world. 

Good qn.  I added a subsection "Qualified imports" to discuss.

| I don't really want to do the latter,
| but I also wouldn't want to maintain explicit import lists.  Also, as
| far as I can see this doesn't provide is nice record update syntax.
| If I can write "b.color" I want to be able to write "b2 = b.color :=
| red"!

Yes, well see "Record syntax".  Might be doable.

| I think this will also lead to either lots of name shadowing warnings
| or more trouble picking variable names.  The short perspicuous names
| this allows are also the most convenient for local variables.  I don't
| want to suddenly not be able to use a 'color' variable name because
| some record has a 'color' field.  A record system (and OO languages)
| would have no trouble with 'let color = b.color' but as far as I can
| see TDNR would have a problem.

Good point. I added a subsection "Top-level disambiguation only"

| So as far as records, TDNR doesn't seem too satisfactory.

I think these points are all addressable, more or less as OO languages do, as mentioned above.

Thanks for the suggestions

Simon