micro-rant

matt hellige matt@immute.net
Fri, 10 Aug 2001 11:03:35 -0500


[Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak@knm.org.pl>]
> Tue, 7 Aug 2001 20:20:49 -0700, Memovich, Gary <GARY.MEMOVICH@kla-tencor.com> pisze:
> 
> > As long as were trying to clean up a final version of the Haskell
> > 98 report, lets simplify it a little by getting rid of unary minus.
> 
> I'm against removing it, even if compatibility was not an issue.
> 
> Yes, it's an irregularity. But it's convenient, readable, and it
> allows using negative constants in patterns.
> 

well, weird inconsistencies aside, negative constants could still be
allowed by adding an optional initial '-' to the lexical specification
of numeric constants...

not that i really think that's the best option... i think people would 
be pretty frustrated if "-56.2" worked but not "-x"...

m

-- 
matt hellige                  matt@immute.net
http://matt.immute.net