2009/5/17 Vasili I. Galchin
Hello,
I am confused between Haskell as delineated in the Haskell Report VS ghc "pragmas" which extend Haskell beyond the Haskell Report. I am sure I am not the first to ask. Caveat: on my part, I am not against innovation/extensions, but I don't like to see language "bloat". This is not a negative/pegorative statement .... just a challenging one.
Let's say that pragmas strong type your code. With the Haskell Report, you can parse a string into a certain block of code which does some kind of functionality. With these, you will get a different type that does prett ymuch the same thing. But these advanced types can also handle certain other tricks too. The philosophy is to use the pragmas then, as declarations so you know which parser to use, etc... It also lets people pass around blocks of data and know what to do with it, rather than relying on simple version numbers. Languages do pick up features all the time. If you're looking for a different perspective, it lets us strictly sort the extensions rather than relying on vague notions such as version number, 'from __future__ import *' (from python) or any of the other weird things you get when there are multiple revisions of a single language spec. In essence it's not that the language is any more bloated than what is normal, or you would still be using KR C to get your work done, because you were afraid of bloat. -Yaakov Nemoy