On Feb 13, 2009, at 11:23 AM, Jonathan Cast wrote:
Usually `when no ambiguity can arise', no? Plenty of mathematical practice rests on imprecision and the expectation that the human reader will understand what you mean. Haskell has to be understandable by the machine (which is less forgiving, but also more reasonable!) as well.
Yes, and name overloading is decidable for machines as well, as the feature exists in numerous languages, and from time to time, we hear talk of the feature for Haskell, as well.
Unless you, say, enjoy having type inference or something.
Name overloading and type inference are not incompatible -- the issue has been discussed here before, though I'm too lazy to dig up the conversation. Regards, John A. De Goes N-BRAIN, Inc. The Evolution of Collaboration http://www.n-brain.net | 877-376-2724 x 101