Do you think 'read' (actually, 'readsPrec'?) could be made to also read the international convention (ie., read "1,5" would also work besides read "1.5")? I'm happy to finaly use a language where I can use words of my language to name variables, so I wonder if we could also make that step.
The purpose of 'read' is to read haskell notation, not to read locally-sensitive notation.
So the right question to ask is "should we change haskell's lexical syntax to support locally-sensitive number notation".
IMO, the answer is no. (...)
Agree about the answer, not about the question. The correct one would be "is it possible to change haskell syntax to support the international notation (not any locally sensitive one) for decimal real numbers? Would a change in 'read' be a good first step?" I know this looks difficult, but I'm sure it deserves at least some thinking. We have previous examples for less important issues: ghc does accept Windows end of line conventions, the minus and sign needs special syntax, and '.' can be used as decimal separator even if it's use as function notation. Best, Maurício