String != [Char]

[Malcolm Wallace]

On 26 Mar 2012, at 15:30, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:

> The Haskell Report claims very prominently that it uses the Unicode
> character set.  The question is whether it should be using it correctly
> at all, and if so should it even try to pretend that its default string type
> use those characters correctly.


> In the region of this side of the Atlantic Ocean where I teach, the
> student population is very diverse

Prelude> putStrLn (take 5 "Fröhßen")
Fröhß
Prelude> putStrLn "фхцчшщъыьэюя"
фхцчшщъыьэюя
Prelude> putStrLn "देवनागरी"
देवनागरी
Prelude> putStrLn "아햇글"
아햇글
Prelude> putStrLn (take 2 "아햇글")
아햇

Whilst there are some places that things do not work out fully correctly - several such warts have been mentioned already in this thread - on the whole, I think Haskell's [Char] is fundamentally not as culturally restrictive as you make out.

Regards,
    Malcolm