In the earlier haskell-cafe discussion of IsString, someone mentioned that it would be nice to abandon [Char] as the blessed string type in Haskell. I've thought about this on and off for a while now, and think that the fact that [Char] is the default string type is a really big issue (for example, it gives beginners the idea that Haskell is incredibly slow, because everything that involves string processing is using linked lists).

I am not proposing anything, but am curious as to what already has been discussed:

1. Has the possibility of migrating away from [Char] been investigated before? 

2. What gains could we see in ease of use, performance, etc, if [Char] was deprecated?

3. What could replace [Char], while retaining the same ease of use for writing string manipulation functions (pattern matching, etc)?

4. Is there any sort of migration path that would make this change feasible in mainline Haskell in the medium term (2-5 years)?

Thanks! I would welcome any references or links that my cursory googling has failed to find.

-- Andrew