"Neil Mitchell"
length, take, drop and index working on machine-sized Ints by default are really a bit of a wart, aren't they?
Yes. Also, having strict Int's by default is a bit ugly, [..] (Not that it isn't a worthwhile trade off, but it is still loosing something to gain something else)
Presumably you refer to the latter point - Int strictness - here? I don't think "optimizing" list operations (take, length etc) to Int buys you much performance - traversing the list is going to be far more expensive. (Or so I believe - anybody care to benchmark it?) Unfortunately, the "genericLenght" name is about as clumsy syntactically as Int is semantically, so it's about an even trade-off :-) -k -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants