Re: [Haskell-cafe] if-then-else as rebindable syntax (was Re: Why does Haskell have the if-then-else syntax?)

I'm all for making Haskell easy for beginners, but as Simon points out, this change shouldn't really affect them. Since I'm also a fan of using Haskell as the host for embedded DSL's, I think this would be a good addition, since it provides more flexibility with the syntax. -Paul Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:

Just to be clear, to get rebindable syntax in GHC today, you have to ask for it explicitly, via -fno-implicit-prelude

If you use that flag, you'd better know what it means. It already means that do-notation uses whatever (>>) and (>>=) are in scope, not Control.Monad.(>>) etc. This if-thing is just another example.

No beginner will encounter this complication; they'd have to ask for it.

Simon