Prelude and (:) and []((:), []) bugs?

[Alastair David Reid]

> Ah, I forgot that you can't export a constructor on its own.  

You can't?

I probably knew this once but looking at it now, it seems kinda
surprising.  Haskell's module system is supposed to be just namespace
control --nothing more-- so why is it preventing me from doing something
which is perfectly safe and well-defined?

I'll readily agree that there's no strong motivation for exporting a
constructor on its own (I think the only reason Hugs allows it is just
so we can export (:) from the Prelude) but what is the motivation for
disallowing it?

-- 
Alastair Reid        reid@cs.utah.edu        http://www.cs.utah.edu/~reid/