binary files in haskell

Erik Meijer erik@meijcrosoft.com
Tue, 6 Feb 2001 10:57:41 -0800


This is exactly what I proposed when fmap and the other weird names were
introduced. Hopefully there are more allies now.

Erik

----- Original Message -----
From: "Koen Claessen" <koen@cs.chalmers.se>
To: "The Haskell Mailing List" <haskell@haskell.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2001 6:25 AM
Subject: Re: binary files in haskell


> Johannes Waldmann wrote:
>
>  | Should this also apply to names in the standard
>  | library? like Monad (filterM, zipWithM ,..)  I mean,
>  | theoretically yes, but is it feasible to change it?
>
> Obviously, these functions should have been called:
>
>   Monad.filter, Monad.zipWith
>
> The lazy programmer can then say:
>
>   import Monad as M    (*)
>
>   M.filter, M.zipWith
>
> Just (asymptotically) 1 character more! :-)
>
>  | getLine -> hGetLine always irritates me.
>
> How about:
>
>   import Handle as H
>
>   H.getLine
>
> (This is a good example where type classes would not help
> making this any better, since the types of getLine and
> H.getLine are very different.)
>
> While we're at it, how about instead of the "fmap" function:
>
>   Functor.map  (F.map)
>   List.map     (L.map)
>   Maybe.map    (M.map)
>
> The programmer can pick him/herself what function to use.
> (The Prelude really has too many functions in it, and very
> often the rationale for a function being in Prelude or in
> Char/List/Maybe/Monad/IO/etc. is not motivated.)
>
> What do people think about this? If people prefer these
> stylistic changes, I think we should not hesitate making
> them for Haskell/2 by completely redesigning the module
> structure and using more consistent naming conventions.
>
> /Koen.
>
> (*) What actually happened to the excellent proposal
> somebody made a while ago for Haskell98:
>
>   import M = Monad
>
> ? I like it a lot!
>
> --
> Koen Claessen         http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~koen
> phone:+46-31-772 5424      mailto:koen@cs.chalmers.se
> -----------------------------------------------------
> Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden
>
>
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