Proposal: Add Data.String, containing IsString(fromString), to base

[Lennart Augustsson]

I don't like the idea of having Eq as a superclass of IsString.
It's a gratuitous constraint.  There are perfectly good examples
where you have something being IsString, but not Eq.  In fact,
I implemented IsString just such an application.  Sure, you can't
use IsString for pattern matching quite as easily, but that's
intentional.
If I got to decide I'd get rid of all the gratuitous superclasses,
like Show and Eq for Num.  They just limit how you can use a class.

(My application is a DSEL where string literal build an abstract
syntax tree.  The only way I can use Num is to make fake instances
for Eq and Show, because those functions cannot really be implemented.)

	-- Lennart

On Jan 30, 2007, at 17:12 , David Roundy wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 01:54:02PM +0000, Ian Lynagh wrote:
>> +-- | Class for string-like datastructures; used by the overloaded  
>> string
>> +--   extension (-foverloaded-strings in GHC).
>> +class IsString a where
>> +    fromString :: String -> a
>> +
>> +instance IsString [Char] where
>> +    fromString xs = xs
>
> Wouldn't it make sense to have IsString require an Eq instance?
>
> class Eq a => IsString a where
>
> so that string literals could be used in pattern matching? The
> only reason I could see not to do this would be if you wanted to make
> something like (Ptr CChar) be an IsString, but that seems pretty  
> crazy to
> me.  I guess you could make (ForeignPtr CChar) be an IsString, and  
> that
> wouldn't be particularly crazy, but it still seems ugly, and  
> reasonably
> pointless.
>
> I'd rather have the inferred type of
>
> foo "bar" = True
>
> be
>
> foo :: IsString a => a -> Bool
>
> than
>
> foo :: (Eq a, IsString a) => a -> Bool
>
> or even worse, to have pattern matching not work as expected with
> -foverloaded-strings.
> -- 
> David Roundy
> http://www.darcs.net
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