IsString [Char] instance

[David Feuer]

I think we should ditch the notion that it's valid to round-trip from
Word32 to Char and back. Char should *only* take on valid codepoints
(although not only assigned ones). This will break some code
(particularly some weird stuff with file names, IIRC), but I think
that code is broken already. I don't, however, think that will fully
address Yitzchak's concerns.

On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 12:22 PM, Dan Doel <dan.doel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 10:57 AM, Yitzchak Gale <gale at sefer.org> wrote:
>>
>> Michael Snoyman wrote:
>> > I have a hard time thinking of a list of something besides
>> > `Char`s for which we'd want an `IsString` instance to work for.
>>
>> I have an easy time. The `Data.Char` module is always
>> woefully behind the Unicode standard, and there are
>> always Unicode features that are implemented differently
>> than what some people might want.
>>
>> A case in point is toUpper and toLower. Those were fixed
>> in Data.Text, but are still broken in Data.Char.
>>
>> For me, so far this has not been important enough for
>> me to need to implement my own Char type, or a newtype
>> wrapper with improvements. But it is certainly conceivable
>> that others might need this.
>>
>> Whether or not you like those examples - it is really the
>> wrong approach to outlaw IsString [a] instance forever more
>> for any a except Char.
>
>
> I'm a little skeptical that someone would be concerned about proper Unicode
> support and still want [Codepoint]---with no abstraction barrier---to be the
> string type. I think it'd even be good if we could ditch [Char] as the
> blessed string type in Haskell altogether. But that's a much more involved
> process.
>
>>
>> Yes, this is a serious problem that should be solved. But
>> are we really giving up on doing it the right way and fixing
>> defaulting rules? Simon wrote that it wouldn't be hard.
>
>
> It doesn't really matter how hard it is unless someone actually does it.
>
> I'm not exactly sure what people want out of beefed up defaulting, and what
> is feasible, either. Fixing 'show ("fizz" ++ "buzz")' is easy. If it also
> has to fix 'length "hello"', that may be more tricky, although it's
> something that the instance solution isn't really capable of fixing. So it's
> best not to get hung up on that.
>
>> I propose: Set a reasonable time limit for someone to step
>> up and provide a suggested fix to the defaulting rules. If that
>> doesn't happen, then bite the bullet and do it using
>> the type equality
>
>
> What is a reasonable time limit? It's been two years already. 7.12 is
> probably between 1/2 and 1 more. Do we really need more than that?
>
> -- Dan
>
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