PROPOSAL: Add 'Natural' type to base:Data.Word

Mark Lentczner mark.lentczner at gmail.com
Mon Nov 17 16:15:53 UTC 2014


I'm neutral on adding Nat or Natural.... seems you math types :-) need to
sort out how to handle subtraction.... the rest of us dirty-hands mechanics
are fine with the quirky subtract operation on Words...

BUT

-2 to adding this to Data.Word.  This is not the place to add this, for at
least two reasons:

   - Data.Int and Data.Word are the "go to" places for types that
   correspond closely with what modern hardware supports, and what most
   interoperable specifications are written to (think file formats, protocols,
   RFCs, etc....). Nat has none of these properties and is hardly universally
   agreed upon!
   - People import Data.Word unqualified all the time - I don't think this
   type meets the trade-off for adding something into many program's global
   name space.

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