| >> we implicitly get | >> f :: T -> Int | >> which punning shadows with | >> f :: Int | >> whereas I generally avoid shadowing completely. | > | > I agree with Ian. | | I tend to agree. I originally had field puns in GHC, and then took them out when Haskell 98 removed them, after a discussion very like this one. I put them back in because some people really wanted them. Actually GHC has three separate extensions to do with named fields: field disambiguation (Section 7.3.14) field puns (Section 7.3.15) field wildcards (Section 7.3.16) Look here http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/users_guide/syntax-extns.html#di... Opinions differ. I'm rather with John: let the programmer choose, rather than enforcing a style in the language. For punning, the programmer can certainly choose on a case by case basis. If you use Haskell 98's existing syntax, there is no change to the semantics if you switch on field puns: data T = C { f :: Int } foo (C {f = x}) = ... -- No punning bar (C {f}) = ... -- Punning It would help this discussion if someone created a ticket to explain the actual proposal, so that we are all discussing the same thing. Simon