hierarchical libraries

[Olaf Chitil]

Simon Marlow wrote:
> 
> > Currently the hierarchical library proposal
> > http://www.haskell.org/~simonmar/libraries/libraries.html
> > does not say much about the semantics of the hierarchical
> > module names.
> > It really should.
> 
> I'm open to suggestions - in fact I thought the semantics were fairly
> clear, but perhaps not?  Or do you mean that the document should say
> more about file names and searching policies? (that would be difficult
> without getting compiler-specific).

Simon,

thinking a bit more about why I misunderstood the description, I realise
how difficult it is to be more clear. I think the problem is not so much
that something is missing, but that the association with file names and
paths subconsciously suggests that you can do everything with
hierarchical module names that you can do with file names.

I'd suggest to move the two paragraphs in Section 3 about file structure
into a separate subsection (3.1 File System) and add something along the
following line:

Note that the hierarchical module namespace is far simpler than a file
directory structure, in that hierarchical module names do not provide
any operations such as relative paths or parent directory.

Olaf

-- 
OLAF CHITIL, 
 Dept. of Computer Science, The University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK. 
 URL: http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/~olaf/
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