Data.Map (in ghc-6.4) has instances for Ord and of Show
(which FiniteMap didn't have).
What does Ord guarantee?
I hope it is a total ordering compatible with (==)
(so that Maps could be elements of Sets etc.)
If so, perhaps there should be a comment in the documentation.
From reading the source ghc-6.4/libraries/base/Data/Map.hs
it is not clear why Eq uses toAscList but Ord uses toList -
so perhaps there is some hidden magic?
What if I don't like the Show instance?
(That seems to be a fundamental question of library design/usage.)
I prefer to have show x return some string
that can be pasted back into the source code (!)
and gives the correct result. So, for FiniteMap I had sth. like
show fm = "listToFM [ (1, True), (2, False) ]"
It seems I cannot hide the Show instance from Data.Map (it is always in
scope, http://www.haskell.org/onlinereport/modules.html#sect5.4)
Perhaps it would be better to have the Show instance
in a separate module (that is not automatically imported).
Because if I want to use a Map with my preferred Show instance now,
I would have to declare my own newtype and instantiate that. -
Maybe that's better design anyway (not exposing the concrete
implementation). It still fixes one implementation, though.
The next step would be to use a type class,
but this severely blows up the type signatures.
With this respect, "corresponding" Java programs really look better,
allowing Map