Re: Proposal: Add hasBitSize to Data.Bits.Bits

From: Edward Kmett

On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 3:42 PM, Ian Lynagh wrote:

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On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 03:06:04PM -0400, Edward Kmett wrote:

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There is currently no way to know whether or not calling Data.Bits.bitSizewill crash your program.

I propose extending the Bits class to include:

hasBitSize :: Bits b => b -> Bool

such that it returns False for Integer and True for the other instances

Would it be better to move bitSize into a separate class?

I don't think so. Ultimately, you should be able to know for every numeric type if it has a fixed or variable number of bits. In a perfect world 'd rather just have bitSize return a Maybe that way we don't have to truck with partial functions in the API.

However, the case for just adding hasBitSize is that it avoids breaking existing code.

Given that existing code using bitSize can already cause a crash when used with Integer or other infinite types, wouldn't it be better to break existing code so authors can fix (or at least examine) their use of bitSize? I'm in favor of changing the type of bitSize, although since none of my code uses that function it's an easy position for me to take. John L.