Views have been the subject of rather inconclusive debate for a long time, certainly since the inception of Haskell. I'm thinking of pattern views as a way to break the logjam by implementing something that is a reasonable stab, and seeing whether it "sticks". I thought of pattern guards in the same way, and they certainly seem to have stuck. But we can only find out by
Simon Peyton-Jones wrote: trying it out. What I fear the most is exactly that this proposal "sticks" and becomes the de-facto standard :( IMHO, the long-time debate about views is not whether they're useful (I think they are!) but which concrete form to choose. Unfortunately, all of the proposals so far are somehow like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: one side is nice but the other is rather ugly. In the end, I might end up using the currently proposed pattern views, not because I'm fond of the proposal but simply because they're implemented and the pain of not using views is too big. Regards, apfelmus