On Mon, Jan 29, 2007 at 10:08:59AM +0100, Andres Loeh wrote:
I didn't fully understand this requirement. If Haskell-prime gets rank-2 or rank-n types, then do we need to restrict constructors in this way?
Ok, this really boils down to the question of whether we do rank-2 or rank-n types. I'm biased, because I actually use rank-n types frequently, and feel somewhat limited by the rank-2 restrictions. I don't know how many people actually do, though. I can understand Iavor's points that rank-2 might be easier to explain, but at least GHC's rank-n extension has a very detailed paper explaining it, so I guess it's one of the better documented extensions.
I would say there is not much point in doing just rank-2. Once you know how to do rank-n (and we do, thanks to SPJ's great paper) then it is just as easy to implement as rank-2. Perhaps even moreso since it is a rather elegant general change to the type inferencer rather than a special case. John -- John Meacham - ⑆repetae.net⑆john⑈