[Haskell-cafe] Add IsNumeric (similar to IsString and IsList)

Ben Franksen ben.franksen at online.de
Sun Jul 19 22:17:35 UTC 2015


Ivan Lazar Miljenovic wrote:
> On 15 June 2015 at 18:05, Chris Wong <lambda.fairy at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 7:04 PM, Michael Baikov <manpacket at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> Now that we have OverloadedList and OverloadedStrings extensions it
>>> might make sense to add something similar for numerals - right now if
>>> you want to be able to specify some items as numbers
>>> you have to implement Num instance, unfortunately not everything that
>>> can be represented as number can have sensible operations required by
>>> Num: negation makes no sense for set  of natural numbers for example,
>>> multiplication for some applications of currency values which results
>>> in Num instance full of (*) = error "No multipication for Foos", (+) =
>>> error "No addition for Foos".
>>>
>>> I don't have any statistics from hackage or github, but in codebase
>>> I'm working with there are 3 such instances.
>>>
>>> Proposal: add OverloadedNumerals language pragma, IsNumeric typeclass
>>> and some methods to make that class useful with behavior similar to
>>> Lists and Strings.
>>
>> As for naming: it should be named IsInteger/fromInteger by analogy
>> with IsString/fromString and IsList/fromList.
> 
> The problem with calling it "fromInteger" is that it would clobber the
> existing fromInteger method in the Num class (thus hiding
> tricks/qualification would be needed when defining/using instances)
> unless it is split out of Num, but that will probably be more of an
> uphill battle.

Can anyone explain to me why IsString was named so and not FromString? I 
wonder about that every time I encounter this class. Would it not make more 
sense to break with this rather unfortunate naming convention?

Cheers
Ben
-- 
"Make it so they have to reboot after every typo." ― Scott Adams




More information about the Haskell-Cafe mailing list