RFC: Add HasCallStack constraint to partial Data.List functions.

[David Feuer]

FWIW, partiality annotations seem a bit silly to me when we don't have
termination checking.

On Wed, Jun 9, 2021, 9:45 AM Henrik Nilsson <Henrik.Nilsson at nottingham.ac.uk>
wrote:

>  > I'm not sure I really agree with that.  There is a rich literature on
>  > effect systems, which decorate types with information about what
>  > effects the function has: exceptions, divergence, IO, and the like.
>   > So type like
>  >   head :: Partial => [a] -> a
>  > where 'Partial =>' expresses the fact that calling this function
>  > might lead to a call of 'error' doesn't seem inherently something
>  > that doesn't belong in a type system.
>
> I, of course, agree that partiality is an effect. And I have no
> issues with effects being reflected in the type system.
> We do that all the time with e.g. monads.
>
> If we indeed had something like
>
>     head :: Partial => [a] -> a
>
> that would be both informative and fairly straightforward to
> explain to students, for example. (Even if it is not clear to
> me that a type class really is the right way to express
> partiality of functions: I always thought information about
> partiality ought to be tied to the function arrow.)
>
> My point is that "HasCallStack" strongly suggest a specific approach
> to monitor the behaviour of a function in case it goes wrong.
>
> To me, at least, that is very operational.
>
> And I would struggle to explain
>
>     head :: HasCallStack => [a] -> a
>
> beyond saying "it's just something that sometimes will help you
> with debugging", and deeply hoping no clever student would
> ask about the lack of similar annotations for other partial
> functions.
>
> Best,
>
> /Henrik
>
>
>
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