Proposal: Improving the IsString String instance

[Edward Kmett]

If that can be done in such a way that defaulting fires for FromString
(say, even without EDR turned on) it could ensure OverloadedStrings has
nearly zero impact on users.

This may not be an issue but you may need to check that just adding
FromString to the list of classes for which defaulting is done is
sufficient to make cases like (length "hello") work as unlike the other
defaulting cases, you get situations where it is partially known. e.g.
we've determined that the argument is [a], but not String. This can't
happen with the Int, Integer, (), cases, which either unify or don't.

If you're looking at hacking up that part of the compiler,
http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/8171 would also be really nice to
clean up at the same time. ;)

-Edward


On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 6:16 PM, Ian Lynagh <igloo at earth.li> wrote:

> On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 05:02:10PM -0400, Edward Kmett wrote:
> >
> > The issue is that length "abc", splitAt 2 "abc", and dozens of other
> tools
> > just stop working for anyone who turns on OverloadedStrings right now.
>
> Would/could this be better addressed by changing
> ghci/ExtendedDefaultRules such that the ambiguous uses would be
> defaulted to String?
>
>
> Thanks
> Ian
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Libraries mailing list
> Libraries at haskell.org
> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/libraries/attachments/20130825/ae9c6b40/attachment.htm>