[Haskell-cafe] Re: Current thinking on CompositionAsDot issue in haskell prime?

[John Smith]

On 28/10/2010 10:15, Alexander Kjeldaas wrote:
>
> Hi haskellers.
>
> Reading through the Haskell Prime suggestions, one that caught my eye is the CompositionAsDot issue.
>
> I'm especially thinking of the Pro issue:
> * Paves the way for using . as the selection operator in improved record or module systems
>
> I think I recognize this issue from common lisp.  Basically the code becomes verbose because accessor functions usually
> need to redundantly encode the name of the module or struct in its name.  The alternative is to require users to import
> qualified, and that doesn't deal with the occasional intra-module collision.
>
> This is a typical large-software-system issue and it annoys me a little that Haskell seems to have inherited the
> problems from common lisp.
>
> I worry that in large systems, a very conservative coding standard is needed with quite verbose naming conventions as
> that's the only safe way to avoid these conflicts in a large system while allowing refactoring code etc.
>
> What is the current thinking on this issue?
>
> Thanks,
> Alexander

TypeDirectedNameResolution would solve the problem you describe, and make Haskell a lot more suitable for real-world 
development (which is usually large-software-system, or at least must be capable of scaling to one).