#13765: GHC cannot parse valid Haskell98 whose first identifier is named signature -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- Reporter: ezyang | Owner: (none) Type: bug | Status: new Priority: low | Milestone: Component: Compiler | Version: 8.2.1-rc2 (Parser) | Keywords: | Operating System: Unknown/Multiple Architecture: | Type of failure: None/Unknown Unknown/Multiple | Test Case: | Blocked By: Blocking: | Related Tickets: Differential Rev(s): | Wiki Page: -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- This no longer parses in GHC 8.2: {{{ ezyang@sabre:~$ cat A.hs signature = 2 ezyang@sabre:~$ ghc-8.0 -c A.hs A.hs:1:1: error: The IO action ‘main’ is not defined in module ‘Main’ ezyang@sabre:~$ ghc-head -c A.hs A.hs:1:11: error: parse error on input ‘=’ Perhaps you need a 'let' in a 'do' block? e.g. 'let x = 5' instead of 'x = 5' | 1 | signature = }}} The problem is that signature is only a keyword in the module header and not in the rest of the code, which means that there is a shift/reduce conflict when you have a `signature` at the top of the module. This is fairly benign bug as you can only trigger it when you have no imports; nevertheless, we should fix it. One possibility is to have a completely different parser entry when you are parsing an `hsig` file so that `signature` never occurs in a module header when you parse a normal Haskell file. ISTR this was modestly more irritating to implement but perhaps it is still not too bad. (Note that the shift/reduce conflict still exists, but since you'll never declare a signature without a module header it is essentially irrelevant.) I discovered this when mpickering pointed out that adding 'signature' to the module header increased the number of shift reduce conflicts. (https://github.com/haskell-suite/haskell-src- exts/pull/355#issuecomment-304536290). This wasn't the case in GHC's parser but only accidentally: there is already a shift reduce conflict when you have a top-level Haddock doc block! -- Ticket URL: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/13765 GHC http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ The Glasgow Haskell Compiler