Unsiged numbers (Was: RFC: Adding a Hashable type class and HashMap/HashSet data types to HP)

[Henning Thielemann]

Daniel Peebles wrote:

> I like this idea. As I mentioned on IRC, I'd call the class Hash rather than 
> Hashable. I'm also with you on the Word return type. It may be less 
> convenient but maybe this will be a tiny step towards the "great Word revolt" 
> (in which all conceptually unsigned things in the prelude and standard 
> libraries actually become unsigned) that I hope will occur sometime in the 
> near future.

"Word" does not seem to be the right ... erm ... word. Modula is calling 
unsigned types CARDINAL. However in Modula-3 CARDINAL is a subset of 
INTEGER (similar to Haskell Int), in order to avoid problems with mixed 
signed/unsigned arithmetic. In the package non-negative I define 
non-negative numeric types, but I found it cumbersome to use them.