[Haskell-cafe] Encoding of Haskell source files

[Daniel Fischer]

On Monday 04 April 2011 10:46:46, Roel van Dijk wrote:
> I propose a few solutions:
> 
> A - Choose a single encoding for all source files.
> 
> This is wat GHC does: "GHC assumes that source files are ASCII or
> UTF-8 only, other encodings are not recognised" [2]. UTF-8 seems like
> a good candidate for such an encoding.

If there's only a single encoding recognised, UTF-8 surely should be the 
one (though perhaps Windows users might disagree, iirc, Windows uses UCS2 
as standard encoding).

> 
> B - Specify encoding in the source files.
> 
> Start each source file with a special comment specifying the encoding
> used in that file. See Python for an example of this mechanism in
> practice [3]. It would be nice to use already existing facilities to
> specify the encoding, for example:
> {-# ENCODING <encoding name> #-}
> 
> An interesting idea in the Python PEP is to also allow a form
> recognised by most text editors:
> # -*- coding: <encoding name> -*-
> 
> C - Option B + Default encoding
> 
> Like B, but also choose a default encoding in case no specific
> encoding is specified.

default = UTF-8
Laziness makes me prefer that over B.

> 
> I would further like to propose to specify the encoding of haskell
> source files in the language standard. Encoding of source files
> belongs somewhere between a language specification and specific
> implementations. But the language standard seems to be the most
> practical place.

I'd agree.

> 
> This is not an official proposal. I am just interested in what the
> Haskell community has to say about this.
> 
> Regards,
> Roel