[Haskell-cafe] Motion to unify all the string data types

[Francesco Mazzoli]

At Sat, 10 Nov 2012 15:16:30 +0100,
Alberto G. Corona  wrote:
> There is a ListLike package, which does this nice abstraction. but I don't
> know if it is ready for and/or enough complete for serious usage.  I´m
> thinking into using it for the same reasons.
> 
> Anyone has some experiences to share about it?

I've used it in the past and it's solid, it's been around for a while and the
original author knows his Haskell.

Things I don't like:

* The classes are huge:
  <http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/ListLike/3.1.6/doc/html/Data-ListLike.html#t:ListLike>.
  I'd much rater prefer to have all those utilities functions outside the type
  class, for no particular reason other then the ugliness of the type class.

* It defines its own wrappers for `ByteString':
  <http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/ListLike/3.1.6/doc/html/Data-ListLike.html#t:CharString>.

* It doesn't have instances for `Text', you have to resort to the
  `listlike-instances' package.

In any case I think it's on the right track, I'd really like something like
that, but much simpler, to be in `base'.

Francesco