Re: [Haskell-cafe] If you'd design a Haskell-like language, what would you do different?

On 20/12/2011, at 9:06 PM, Thiago Negri wrote:

...

There isn't one!

Bottoms will be the null pointers of the 2010's, you watch.

How would you represent it then?

Types probably. In C, the badness of null pointers is that when you inspect an int* you don't always find an int. Of course the superior Haskell solution is to use algebraic data types, and represent a possibly exceptional integer by "Maybe Int". But then when you inspect a "Maybe Int" you don't always get an .. ah.

Would it cause a compiler error?

Depends whether you really wanted an Int or not. Ben.