Proposal: Make gcd total

[Judah Jacobson]

On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 3:49 PM, Daniel Fischer
<daniel.is.fischer at googlemail.com> wrote:
> I would like to propose the elimination of the special error case
>
> gcd 0 0 = error "Prelude.gcd: gcd 0 0 is undefined"
>
> to replace it with
>
> gcd 0 0 = 0
>
> (which would be an automatic consequence of removing the above line).
>

In my email archives, I found two previous threads on the subject.
Both ended up in favor of the proposal:
http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2001-December/008560.html
http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2009-May/060880.html

As a result of the latter discussion, a ticket was opened on GHC's trac:
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/3304
But it was eventually closed for lack of attention.

So if someone actually follows through with this as an official
libraries submission (with a patch, deadline, etc.), the odds seem in
favor of it.

Best,
-Judah