On Fri, Mar 02, 2012 at 01:04:13AM +0000, AntC wrote:
Let me explain better what I mean by "two private namespaces", then we'll try to understand how your proposal goes ...
Folks, it has been very difficult keeping up with all the twists and turns of this thread. So here's a summary of my proposal, by popular demand, http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Records/DeclaredOverloadedRecordFie... #ThumbnailSketch Reminder about this approach: * It requires no new semantics from Haskell (beyond ghc v7.2 extensions). * Therefore a prototype can be developed, and it has! you can download and see for yourself. * The syntax for record updates is the same as it is today. (Although the semantics is polymorphic, not monomorphic.) * The syntax for data declarations is the same as it is today. * The syntax for field selection is the same as it is today. (But polymorphic for any record with a field of that name.) * There is a dot notation syntax possible for field selection, (strictly optional, sugar only). * It does support type-changing update to records, for parametric polymorphic fields and records. But: * This approach does not have a solution for updating fields of higher-rank types. (In that respect it is like SORF. This is the remaining problem. And I suspect that any solution for SORF will equally work for DORF.) There were some criticisms about how much boilerplate this approach would need. There are some ideas/suggestions to improve that. In particular see "Option Three: Mixed In-situ and Declared ORF" further down the page from the Thumbnail Sketch. Constructive feedback welcome. AntC