Proposal: Add readMaybe (and possibly readEither) to Prelude, make Haddocks for read more cautionary

[David Feuer]

One tricky point is that there are partial functions we usually prefer to
pretend are total. For example, Data.Map.insert is partial: if size m =
maxBound :: Int, then the result of insert k v m is nonsense (this may be
possible in a 32-bit system with lots of memory). A similar restriction
holds in Data.Sequence, but could even be hit in a 64-bit system with
virtually no memory using, e.g., () <| replicate maxBound (). So there are
shades of partiality we want to worry about and partiality we don't,
depending on what we're doing.

On Jan 5, 2017 11:50 AM, "Mario Blažević" <blamario at ciktel.net> wrote:

> On 2017-01-05 11:22 AM, Kris Nuttycombe wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 7:01 AM, Phil Ruffwind <rf at rufflewind.com <mailto:
>> rf at rufflewind.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     Rather than deprecating a function, it would be nice to have some sort
>>     of {-# PARTIAL #-} pragma to warn the user that 'read' is a partial
>>     function (and similarly for 'head', 'tail' and its friends), much like
>>     how GHC already warns about partial case-blocks.  That being said,
>>     it's
>>     probably best to delay this until there is a way to explicitly turn of
>>     the warnings individually at the call site for those who want
>>     warning-free code.
>>
>>
>> This strikes me as the right avenue to pursue. While I'd personally be
>> happy to expunge partial functions from base entirely, I recognize that
>> others have different needs - and a {-# PARTIAL #-} pragma would have broad
>> utility. Coupled with a -fno-warn-partial flag, users would be able to
>> opt-in to the status quo, but the default would be to steer people away
>> from partial functions, which seems like the right thing. For new users,
>> the warnings would be educational, since for many people coming from
>> languages where many "functions" are partial the idea of totality is
>> something that needs to be learned.
>>
>
> I like this idea the best so far. Two more points:
>
> - haddock should generate some warning in documentation from the {-#
> PARTIAL #-} pragma, so there should probably be an optional warning
> message, as in {-# PARTIAL "`head` expects a non-empty list" #-}
> - -fno-warn-partial should be called -Wno-partial to fit the other warning
> flags
>
>     Also, GHC already generates partiality warnings with
> -Wincomplete-patterns, they're just not on by default. Would these be
> affected? Should haddock generate warnings for incomplete patterns in
> documentation, and is there any relation between -Wno-partial and
> -Wno-incomplete-patterns?
>
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