
On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 10:15, Yitzchak Gale
The only reason I don't like using OverloadedStrings for typing string literals as Text and ByteString is that when you turn on OverloadedStrings, you turn it on for all types, not just Text and ByteString. I don't want to be forced to do that. Because all other uses of OverloadedStrings that I have seen, and there are many, are ill-advised in my opinion. They all should have been quasiquoters.
I don't think IsString should be dismissed so easily. I agree that instances should be total functions (and I don't like the ByteString.Char8 instance for that reason) but there are many more good use cases than Text and (UTF8) ByteStrings. For example, we have a couple of newtypes over Text that do different kinds of normalization. An IsString instance for these is useful and total. Erik