String != [Char]

[Greg Weber]

Can we all agree that

* Text can now demonstrate both CPU and RAM performance improvements
in benchmarks. Because Text is an opaque type it has a maximum
potential for future performance improvements. Declaring a String to
be a list limits performance improvements
* In a Unicode world, String = [Char] is not always correct: instead
for some operations one must operate on the String as a whole. Using a
[Char] type makes it much more likely for a programmer to  mistakenly
operate on individual characters. Using a Text type allows us to
choose to not expose character manipulation functions.
* The usage of String in the base libraries will continue as long as
Text is not in the language standard. This will continue to make
writing Haskell code a greater chore than is necessary: converting
between types, and working around the inconvenience of defining
typeclasses that operate on both String and [].


These are important enough to *try* to include Text into the standard,
even if there are objections to how it might practically be included.