Export lists in modules

[John Meacham]

On Wed, Feb 22, 2006 at 05:11:26PM -0000, Simon Marlow wrote:
> Indeed, the distinction between data & newtype should be a completely
> private property, so we certainly shouldn't distinguish those in
> exports/imports.  It's less clear to me whether type and data/newtype
> should be distinguished or not, which is why I asked the question.  I'm
> not sure I agree with John's answer, I'd rather just say 'type' or
> 'data', using 'data' for both data and newtype, like Haddock does.

my best argument against this is to try to compile the following under
ghc in strict haskell 98 mode

> class Foo a 
> instance Foo IOError

oops!

Even if the restriction on synonyms in instance heads is lifted, being
able to use type synonyms to give true aliases for types is important
part of writing interfaces that can evolve and encapsulating
implementation details.

But more importantly, The haskell module system has a nice philosophy of
just being about controlling the namespace of what is in scope in a
module. Conflating representation details with it would just confuse
things. I'd say use 'type' for everything in the type namespace, class
for everything in the class namespace, value (or nothing) for things in
the value namespace and so forth.  We want the module system to describe
precicely what names are in scope and what entities names in a module
map too, nothing more. It is also a much simpler set of rules to
remember and much more straightforward to specify.


        John

-- 
John Meacham - ⑆repetae.net⑆john⑈