Make Eq type class single method

[Joachim Breitner]

Hi list,

I am revisiting some educational material about Haskell, and I stumble
over something that I keep stumbling over. I thought there was prior
discussion, but I couldn’t find it (operators hard hard to google for).

Why does Eq have a (/=) method?

Semantically, I don’t see a reason why an instance might want to behave
differently than the default method. And (in contrast to, say, Ord), I
would be surprised if there are noticable performance benefits to be
gained from implementing (/=) separately.

On the other hand, this is likely the first time a learner will
encounter a class with default methods, and it’s awkward to explain
“this mechanism is useful if you can have an optimized implementation,
but, eh, here it isn’t really possible”.

If we’d design the language now, would we include (/=) as a method?


If no: would it be worth removing it?

Yes, every change is annoying, but if are going to keep using Haskell
the next 30 days, it may pay off? And it might not be too bad: Remove
it from base, but teach GHC to not error out if an instance defines
(/=), but print a warning and otherwise ignore it. Libraries can remove
it if it is defined, which is a backwards-compatible change.

WDYT?
Joachim


-- 
Joachim Breitner
  mail at joachim-breitner.de
  http://www.joachim-breitner.de/