On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 2:00 AM, wren ng thornton
I haven't been following all the different proposals out there, but the ones I did see before tuning-out all took the stance that for each given field either (1) this field name is unique and always clashes, or (2) this field name is shared and never clashes. This is problematic for a number of reasons. The particular reason I raised is that there are times when we would like for a field name to be shared, but only shared among a specified group of records and clashing with all other records (which may themselves form groups that share the name as well).
I had a proposal that, I think, wouldn't have that clash/no clash distinction, because it doesn't have the notion of overloading a single symbol ala typeclasses. So I think it would sidestep that whole problem. Anyway, I copied it up at http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Records/SyntaxDirectedNameResolutio... if only so I can feel like I said my thing and can stop mentioning it :)