it's the entire Enum class which doesn't have a consistent or sensible semantics

Yes, for a language with generally sound mathematical roots, Enum is an embarrassment. My pet peeve is that Rationals are enumerable, but not with Enum. And the differing lengths of [1,4..6] and [1.0,4.0..6.0] will shock even the non-mathematically inclined. Much of the craziness can be hidden if in place of [a..b] for nonintegral numeric types, one uses (map fromInteger [a..b]). Perhaps that should happen automatically. As for the horror mentioned at the end of the first paragraph, the language definition's oafish attempt to "get right" things like [0.0,0.1..1.0] needs major revision. Doug McIlroy