Why _scc_ "foo" and not {-# SCC "foo" #-} ?

IMHO a pragma would be better: does not make the scc-annotated program non-standard.

(Well, nhc98 should be fixed to ignore unknown pragmas in arbitrary places.)

Good suggestion. I'm not sure why it was done the current way; perhaps it was before the advent of pragmas. Anyway, on my ToDo list it goes... Cheers, Simon