"Vasili I. Galchin"
Hello,
I am confused between Haskell as delineated in the Haskell Report VS ghc "pragmas" which extend Haskell beyond the Haskell Report.
Pragmas are part of the report, and while I agree that using them for extensions is stretching the meaning a bit, it's clearly the best way of doing it -- they're not supposed to change the semantics of the language as defined, but it doesn't say anything about what they do to stuff that isn't part of the language.
I am sure I am not the first to ask. Caveat: on my part, I am not against innovation/extensions, but I don't like to see language "bloat".
Me neither, but many of the extensions are for things that hadn't been invented (or perhaps finalised, such as heirarchical modules, IIRC) when the standard was written, and which make the language more expressive, which is a worthwhile aim. Among the stated aims of Haskell was to be a platform for language development. Pragmas keep the experimental stuff separate from the stuff one can rely on because it's part of H98. -- Jón Fairbairn Jon.Fairbairn@cl.cam.ac.uk