H-core (was: Re: ~ patterns)

Taral writes:

On 1/31/06, Simon Marlow wrote:

...

I've been swayed by the arguments put forward by the ~-proponents, so I'm not going to champion the removal of ~ any more.

We must find *something* to throw away though! :-)

I still like the idea of splitting Haskell' into Haskell'-core and Haskell'-lazy, and moving ~ and ! patterns into Haskell'-lazy.

The Haskell'98 Report already uses an informal notion of a "core" language, into which other syntactic constructs are translated. I think in Haskell-prime we ought to define this core precisely and formally. One can even imagine someone developing a pure H-core compiler, with the fuller language implemented as a pre-processor over the top! (I know at least one person who would prefer to write programs in core rather than Haskell'98...) Regards, Malcolm