| Here's a bit of background I managed to dig up: | http://www.mail-archive.com/haskell@haskell.org/msg05160.html | It appears that a change to the monomorphism | restriction to match Hugs's behaviour was considered for | Haskell 98, but it looks like it never made it into the report | (for what reason I'm not sure - the arguments in favour of the | change look fairly compelling). There was a bit of to and fro, but I ended up deciding not to do anything: http://www.mail-archive.com/haskell@haskell.org/msg03293.html Simon