Re: [Haskell-cafe] Renaming constructors for readability

14 Nov 2007

      Henning Thielemann wrote:
...
On Tue, 13 Nov 2007, Dougal Stanton wrote:
...
On 13/11/2007, Henning Thielemann  wrote:
...
On Tue, 13 Nov 2007, Dougal Stanton wrote:
...
-- int a = 3;
-- int *pa = &a;
ampersand :: t -> Pointer t
ampersand a = Just a
What's bad about using 'ampersand' function as replacement for the
constructor 'Just'?
I also wanted to use it in pattern matching but have the advantage of
all the stuff already written for Maybe.
No problem, write a function like 'maybe' to inspect the data.
Instead of 'f m' with
f :: Maybe T -> S
f (Just x) = g x
f Nothing  = h
Yes. It is a problem.

Do you write all your code using higher-order functions, never matching 
explicitly on constructors? I don't.

Matching explicitly on constructors is an elegant and easy-to-read way 
to write programs. It's annoying to have to choose between (a) nicely 
named constructors and (b) being able to re-use library functions 
defined for Maybe.

Jules

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Renaming constructors for readability

Jules Bean