On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 01:45:25PM +0000, Malcolm Wallace wrote:
As examples of language features that should be removed or revised, how about these: (a) n+k patterns (b) the defaulting mechanism (c) the monomorphism restriction
(b) is annoying, but I don't see an alternative now. Removing the defaulting mechanism would be very backwards-incompatible, and require a lot of type signatures in annoying places. For instance, any time you exponentiate using ^ or ^^ and a literal exponent, like f x = x^2 you have to specify the type of '2' if you don't have defaulting. I encountered this with my proposed replacements for the numeric classes, where defaulting is necessarily broken. Usually it's not so much of an issue and only requires a small number of explicit types; this is the one instance where it really interferes. I'd be happy to have a better solution. Peace, Dylan