Mark partial functions as such

[Richard Eisenberg]

Just to clarify here: all I mean is that we should include the word "Partial" in the Haddock documentation -- no deprecation or warning, just documentation.

Richard

> On Aug 30, 2018, at 8:10 PM, Richard Eisenberg <rae at cs.brynmawr.edu> wrote:
> 
> Proposal: Mark partial functions in `base` as partial
> 
> Motivation: I'm about to teach Haskell to a classful of beginners. In my experience, they will soon reach for functions like `head` and `tail`, because pattern-matching is foreign to them. I would love just to be able to say "Don't use partial functions", but many students will not easily be able to tell partial functions from total ones.
> 
> I do expect this problem to work itself out rather quickly, and then students will be able to identify partial functions, but loudly marking partial functions as partial seems like a small service to everyone and a bigger one to newbies. I don't see any downsides.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Thanks,
> Richard
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