On 31 January 2006 03:42, John Meacham wrote:
What do people think about seperating the class and type namespaces? one can always tell the difference syntactically which is meant, the only thing keeping them in the same space in jhc is an artificial check to ensure you don't create some of the same name.
the only issue is in export/import lists if you wanted to allow import/export of the type independently of the class. however the proposed explicit namespace change to the import/export syntax would solve this too and it is unlikely to actually be a problem in practice.
I've always liked the idea of saying 'class C' or 'type T' in import/export lists. It could be made backwards compatible: we allow types and classes to be named the same, but in this case the export list has to use the new syntax to disambiguate. The idea would be to transition to the new syntax eventually. There's a choice about whether a newtype should be exported with 'newtype T' or 'data T', or either. Cheers, Simon