"Brian Hulley"
because if the suggested syntax is used, import directives come in two flavours: ones that use "from" to import from a different package and ones that don't use "from" and therefore must refer to the current package.
What is the "current package"? My impression was that "from" would only be needed when there was ambiguity. (And if I wanted to type myself to death, I'd be using Java :-) If you *have* to specify package, this makes things a lot less flexible (e.g., moving a module from one package to another will break code) Would 'base' be the current package in most cases? That would encourage cramming even more stuff into base¹, and I suspect the overloaded 'base' is half the reason we're discussing all this extra syntactical baggage. (E.g. experimenting with a newer version of Don's FPS, I basically need to replace 'base'. With the features being discussed, I could get by rewriting the import statements in all my fps-using code, which would be an improvement. It'd be much safer and better to have a compiler option, of course, but I guess that will only work for complete packages.) Anyway (and like you say) I think the workaround using qualification or hiding is more than sufficient, I consider recycling names from imported modules for local variables questionable as best, and would rather it wasn't encouraged.
3) Syntax: I liked Ian Lynagh's suggestion of using "from" to start either a single import directive or a block of import directives http://www.haskell.org//pipermail/haskell-cafe/2006-June/016338.html eg (modified to use quotes):
from "base" import Predude hiding(length) import Control.Exception import qualified Data.List as List
Would this make 'from' a reserved word? I think this is only useful if you require the module to be declared, and thus not worth an extra keyword (and code breakage) if non-ambigous modules can still be imported. Anyway, I'd just like to say that I'm really happy about the way GHC and Cabal currently works - 'ghc --make' takes care of package imports, and Cabal is simple enough that most of my code gets Cabalized these days. -k ¹ What *is* the advantage of stuffing everything and the kitchen sink into base, btw? -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants