[Haskell-cafe] string literals and haskell'

I've just been annoyed with errors ghc reports when I use a string literal such as ":\/:" (which is a contructor in darcs). Of course, it wants ":\\/:", but I'd rather type the former. Is there any reason why the language couldn't be modified (e.g. in haskell') to make the former legal? i.e. to treat string literals with '\\' followed by a character that doesn't describe an escape as a literal backslash? It makes the rules a bit more complicated, but doesn't modify the meaning of any currently-legal code, and removes a potential error. -- David Roundy Department of Physics Oregon State University