String != [Char]

[ARJANEN Loïc Jean David]

Le 22/03/2012 04:29, Greg Weber a écrit :
> This proposal seems fairly uncontroversial at the moment. I would
> really like it if someone more familiar with the proposal process can
> take this proposal up and help make sure it gets in the next batch. I
> can't even figure out how to create a wiki page for the proposal right
> now :)

Well, this proposal seems uncontroversial because we didn't arrive to 
the difficult part: what operations should we define on this String type 
for it to be useful.
Because with only this proposal as it stands now (String defined as an 
implementation-defined newtype, a typeclass defined for conversion 
from/to String and [Char] as an instance of this typeclass), we're in a 
worse situation than before: not only String became useless given there 
is no operations defined on it, the only mean we have to portably work 
with it is to translate it to [Char] before doing anything.
So now, the fun part begins...what operations should String support ? I 
propose obtaining the length of a String, taking a substring of a given 
size beginning at a given index, taking the character at index i in a 
String, concatenation, converting a string to upper/lower case and 
determining if a string is contained in/a prefix/a suffix of another.
I am sure I am forgetting some useful operations and some operations I 
said are better placed in the typeclass or in a typeclass instance or 
are particular cases of general operations we should define rather than 
the particular cases. So, what are the operations we should define 
according to you ?

Regards,
ARJANEN Loïc