Export lists in modules

[Ketil Malde]

Benjamin Franksen <benjamin.franksen at bessy.de> writes:

>> If this means that you must import Data.List almost everywhere, this
>> won't change anything - only add yet another import to every file.

> But you could import something different instead!

Yes.  You can do that as it is, of course (well, more or less, at
least).  The question is who gets the overhead, the users who replace
the Prelude or the ones who don't. 

I still think the people (and the modules) who replace Prelude lists
with alternative libraries are outnumbered by those who don't.

 =  =  =  = 

Perhaps it would be interesting to run some statistics to see what
parts of the Prelude are actually used, and what parts are commonly
hidden?  Suggestions on how to do that?

Grepping for "Prelude" reveals import (- for hiding, + for importing):

darcs:     - catch (3), init (1), lookup (2), pi (8), log (1)
lambdabot: - mod, catch(2), lookup (2), filter (2)
           + Ord, Bool, Int, flip 

(Note that a lot of this is for providing backwards compatibility for
pre-Data.Map/Set GHC (<6.02))

>From my own code, I only hide 'lookup' to avoid clashing with Set and
Map.  In addition, there's ANSI.lhs (sounds familiar, John? :-) which
explicitly imports only the functions it uses from the Prelude, but
which can omit the import without any apparent ill effects.

Grepping for "hiding" reveals:

darcs: Graphics.UI.WX hiding (when, text), Text.Html hidin (name, text), 
       Directory hiding (getCurrentDirectory, renameFile)
lambdabot: System.Random (split) ... clean, test, send ...

I'm not sure what to conclude from this, but it seems to me:

1. A lot of the clashes are between Set, Map, and list functionality,
   so I'm not alone here.
2. Some small collisions between short names occur, but not a huge
   amount.  One could argue for e.g. separating out numeric functions
   (log, pi), but it's probably not worth it.
3. Avoid exporting generic names like "text", "name", "when" from
   libraries.  Surely these could have been named better?

It would of course be more interesting if somebody would check code
they have lying around.

-k
-- 
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants