Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk writes:
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Why it is bad:
I appreciate your objections, and will bear them in mind, but if my hopes are going to be dashed, I'd rather it were done by one of the issues I see as bigger: - How can we infer types like `(0==) :: Subtype Int a => a -> Bool' ? - What is F^{omega}_{<=} and am I trying to reinvent it and what makes it so hard to implement? Feel free to call me a chicken for not answering your individual points... yet. :-)
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There should be no subtype relationship between Int8 and Word8 in either direction, because they denote different things: numbers and encodings respectively.
I hope we are not misunderstood. Word8 in GHC is an integer type representing values 0..255. It is definitely a number, in the same sense as Int8. Only their ranges are not contained in one another.
My mistake. Thanks for the clarification.
If Word8 literals are required, as opposed to terms like fromEnum 10, they should have some other appearance like 10W.
And you are saying that your proposal is less ugly than the current state? :-)
Joking aside, yes, it may make the overall state even more beautiful. Regards, Tom