More feedback on Haskell 98 modules from the Programatica Team

[Wolfgang Lux]

Simon Peyton-Jones wrote

> | 2) The semantics of "module M" style entries in export lists seems to
> |    Program 2:  module A(module B, ...) where
> |    ~~~~~~~~~~   import qualified B
> |                 ... code that doesn't import B ...
> | 
> |    A similar example: now B appears as an import, but there are no
> |    unqualified imports of B, so either "module B" adds nothing to the
> |    export list (except instances?), or else this program is an error.
> | 
> |    Item 5 on p65 (describing entities exported from modules) says that
> |    "module m" exports entities brought into scope from m by one or
> more
> |    *unqualified* imports.  But this example suggests more; that it
> will
> |    export instances brought into scope from *qualified* imports too.
> |    Perhaps the intention is that "module m" exports all instances,
> |    and all entities that are imported from m with an unqualified name?
> 
> I don't think it should matter whether B is imported qualified or not; I
> propose
> to remove the *unqualified* adjective in the above quote.

I don't think that this is a good idea. In particular because it may 
break existing programs. Consider two modules with one common name, e.g.

module A where
  f x = 1
  ... a lot of other definitions ...
module B where
  f x = 2
  ... a lot more definitions but none conflicting with A's top-level entities ...

The following module is legal under the current semantics of the report 
(and will export everything from A and B except for A.f and in 
particular will generate no names clashes in the body of the module 

module C (module A,module B,module C) where
  import A hiding(f)
  import qualified A(f)
  import B
  ... code using A.f and f (i.e. B.f) ...

With your proposed change there will be a name clash for the export of 
f from module C.

Wolfgang


--
Wolfgang Lux				  Phone: +49-251-83-38263
Institut fuer Wirtschaftinformatik	    FAX: +49-251-83-38259
Universitaet Muenster		      Email: wlux@uni-muenster.de