Friends

There has been a bit of discussion, but it seems to have died down again.  Any other views?

Richard, you were a bit negative – has the intervening discussion reassured you?

I’d like us to decide pretty soon…. no point in delay.

Simon

From: Simon Peyton Jones <simonpj@microsoft.com>
Sent: 23 February 2021 15:06
To: ghc-steering-committee <ghc-steering-committee@haskell.org>
Cc: Simon Peyton Jones <simonpj@microsoft.com>
Subject: Modification to record dot syntax propsal

Friends

Please see this proposal #405 to split RecordDotSyntax into two extensions

It is a small modification of #282 on record dot syntax.   The top comment gives links to the versions of the proposal before and after the change.

The main payload is:

• Instead of RecordDotSyntax, have to independent extensions, OverloadedRecordDot and OverloadedRecordUpdates.

I recommend acceptance of this proposal, but invite the committee’s view on one point (the final bullet below). Here is the thinking

• RecordDotSyntax is the extension that we will eventually want programmers to user. It will probably ultimately imply NoFieldSelectors. But we aren’t quite ready make that choice yet. So we don’t want to specify exactly what RecordDotSyntax does yet.
• So we want another, less ambitious, extension to enable record-dot syntax itself, and its desugaring into getField; and similarly for record updates.
• This patch to the proposal goes just a little further, by dis-aggregating into two independent extensions, OverloadedRecordDot and OverloadedRecordUpdates.
• An alternative, if the committee prefers, would be to have a single extension (say, OverloadedRecords).

Please express your opinion.  This should not take us long.   (Technical and clarification questions would be best done on the Githhub thread, as always.)

Simon