Hi
I agree with the idea. However, remember that this won't be fully backwards compatible as anyone who performs a pattern match will now get a crash. Given that, I think I'd be more in favour of renaming StringRep to CharRep in one single step, otherwise you are going to allow the old code to compile fine and crash at runtime. Having mkStringRep be deprecated is a good idea though.
It would still warn about the use of deprecated StringRep (and also a non-exaustive pattern match with -Wall).
Yes, but you'd have to have either the deprecated warning or the non-exhaustive pattern.
But I won't oppose to changing it in one go. But then mkStringRep would disappear?
No, its a function, deprecate it, but leave it present. Constructors are different - two constructors for one purpose is an absolute pain. Functions can come and go, and can duplicate functionality without any trouble. Thanks Neil