Claus,
The need to shadow the data types is a bit annoying, but then the whole generic bit would preferably be generated anyway. Template Haskell to the rescue, or Drift?-)
Agreed. Current plan is to use Drift
There is still something I don't understand about your specification: the assertions take on a post-mortem character - by the time the assertion fails, the main thread might have run into trouble already (after all, its evaluation drives the assertion).
So while this would work,
let l = "" print $ length $ assert "non-empty l" (not . null) l
this might not be a good idea:
let l = "" print $ head $ assert "non-empty l" (not . null) l
At best, you get both the main-thread error and the assertion-thread failure message. That's why I was asking what you intend to do with the assertions.
Yes indeed. One ideally wants assertions to be the 'first consumers' of data as it becomes evaluated. But the whole business of how best to define and use assertions is exactly what my student should be exploring in his project -- are you reading this Dan?! Colin R