[Haskell-cafe] [ghc-proposals] Allow reserved identifiers as fields ...

[Ivan Perez]

I don't know the history of why you might be banned if you are, so I feel
comfortable being the proxy.

Regardless, I've posted my own opinion on github (
https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/668) just now and *I
urge others to do the same*.

Allowing keywords as anything but keywords is a very bad idea. It should
not be allowed.

Ivan

On Tue, 24 Dec 2024 at 19:50, Anthony Clayden <anthony.d.clayden at gmail.com>
wrote:

> And Merry Christmas to all.
>
> I counsel against allowing reserved ids to be anything other than reserved
> ids. "...   is fraught with peril, unduly complicates the parser, and
> harms readability. " says a language implementer I asked.
>
> But wanting to use field names dictated outside this language's control is
> a realistic requirement, for which there are several general approaches.
> The ghc proposal as it stands seems ad-hoc and very specific to one user
> organisation. Furthermore, this just ain't true:
>
> > ...  SQL schemas. anyone working with those is stuck deciding between
> special-casing its naming, and consistently naming *everything* weirdly,
> ...
>
> SQL consistently supports things like embedded spaces, fields starting
> upper-case [**], embedded dots or other graphics -- by no means just names
> that clash with reserved ids.
>
> How does it do that? And this answer seems particularly relevant when
> these ids are going to feed into `HasField` constraints as a type-level
> String: put the id between quotes.
>
> >  orgNotification."type"
>
> doesn't look too ugly to my eye. And to spj's repeated point: I could
> envisage allowing fields in `data` decls and record syntax to be quoted.
> (Again you couldn't use punning nor field-name as function.)
>
> The approach is sufficiently general it could be extended to `#"Label
> naming"`.
>
> [**] I'm particularly keen on field names starting upper case, because
> they're injective/part of the structure, like data constructors.
>
> AntC
>
> (Why am I posting to the cafe, not github? I seem to be blocked from
> posting on any topic, either on github or gitlab -- even for pages where
> I'm the sole author. I'd be grateful if somebody could post the above to
> the PR.)
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