RE: GHC Poll: scope in GHCi

"Simon Marlow" writes:

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:m [+|-] [*]M1 ... [*]Mn (n >= 0)

(nit: I would paraphrase to make n >= 1, since you start numbering at 1. Wrap the whole M-list with optionality brackets if that's the intended meaning (setting the scope to nothing? The default?))

The n >= 0 trick is used in the Haskell report so I thought it might be familiar to people here :-)

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Currently the non-* form isn't supported for compiled modules, and attempting to set an unsupported scope results in an error.

Since, if I understand correctly, there is no explicit way of differentiating between compiled and interpreted modules, so why not simply fall back to interpreting the module in question?

Because that requires a reload, which might be counter-intuitive (:m doesn't otherwise cause loading of modules), and furthermore it would erase any bindings made so far on the command line. But :m might emit a message like the following if you attempt to set the scope to the top-level of a compiled module: > :m Foo module 'Foo' is compiled; to include its top-level scope, try ':interpret Foo', ':reload', then ':m Foo'. Where ':interpret Foo' would force interpreting of module Foo starting from the next reload. Cheers, Simon