2 Apr
2010
2 Apr
'10
9:56 a.m.
On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Jens Blanck
I was wondering if someone could give me some references to when and why the choice was made to default integral numerical literals to Integer rather than to Int in Haskell. Also, if you are aware of similar discussions in other languages.
There is one for Erlang I am aware of. Unfortunately I can't remember where I have read it, so it will have to come off of my head rather than by correct citation. I think it was Joe Armstrong who mused over the idea of having integers of arbitrary size. The argument is that a bug in software due to overflow can be very costly to fix in big installations. As such, it is better to avoid problems by using, essentially, Integer as the default integer type.