[Haskell] Module system question

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

The H98 report is pretty clear about there being a single name space for type constructors and classes.  Yes, in certain circumstances it's unambiguous.  In Hugs, can you write
        module M where
          class C a
          data C = MkC
          f :: C a =>  C -> C
which is also unambiguous.

I'm inclined to stick to the H98 story.

Simon

| -----Original Message-----
| From: haskell-bounces at haskell.org [mailto:haskell-bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf Of Iavor Diatchki
| Sent: 15 October 2007 20:35
| To: haskell at haskell.org
| Subject: [Haskell] Module system question
|
| Hello,
|
| I have a question concerning Haskell's module system.
| Consider the following example which defines three modules A,B, and C:
|
| > module A where { data X = X }
| > module B where { class X a }
| > module C where { import A; import B; data Y = Y X }
|
| The question is: "Is there an ambiguity error in module C?".  It seems
| that the answer depends on how we interpret "ambiguous".  In the
| context of module C, the name X may refer to either the class defined
| in module B, or the datatype defined in module A.  Therefore, we could
| consider X to be ambiguous, and indeed, this is what happens in GHC
| 6.6.  On the other hand, the name X is used in a context where we are
| expecting a type constructor and not a class name, and therefore the
| name X could be unambiguously taken to refer to the datatype X, which
| is what seems to happen in Hugs.
|
| I like the Hugs behavior because it accepts more programs.  OTOH,
| GHC's behavior may be a bit simpler to explain and implement(?).   Any
| thoughts?
|
| -Iavor
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