Hi List, Twan,
I would argue the opposite: the function name indicates that it will
transform a *digit* into an *int*. Digits in most cases any developer will
deal with are `elem` [0 .. 9], so it would make more sense to produce an
error for anything else, and provide a *separate *function, hexDigitToInt with
the hex reading behavior. (This would be a silently breaking change, so I'd
think carefully before seriously proposing this.) Twan is suggesting what
amounts to englishAlphaOrDigitToInt; is there any particular reason to give
the English alphabet special treatment in this case? I could instead
imagine the usefulness of alphaPos :: Alphabet -> Char -> Int which
indicates what position a given character is in its alphabet (alphaPos
English 'a' == 1, for instance), and its inverse alphaFromPos :: Alphabet
-> Int -> Char.
But if I am trying to read a number from a String, I would almost certainly
want it to fail on encountering any non-hex digit, rather than producing a
strange number.
--
Dan Burton
On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 2:59 PM, Twan van Laarhoven
Hello List,
I propose to change the functions digitToInt and intToDigit in Data.Char to
digitToInt :: Char -> Int digitToInt c | isDigit c = ord c - ord '0' | c >= 'a' && c <= 'z' = ord c - ord 'a' + 10 | c >= 'A' && c <= 'Z' = ord c - ord 'A' + 10 | otherwise = error ("Char.digitToInt: not a digit " ++ show c)
intToDigit :: Int -> Char intToDigit i | i >= 0 && i <= 9 = toEnum (fromEnum '0' + i) | i >= 10 && i <= 35 = toEnum (fromEnum 'a' + i - 10) | otherwise = error "Char.intToDigit: not a digit"
(and equivalently for the Ghc specialized version in Data.Show)
Right now the functions only work for c <= 'f' and i <= 15, i.e. only up to hexadecimal. But I can think of no reason why that should be the case.
There is the problem of compatibility with the Haskell98/2010 report. But since this proposed change only reduces the number of cases that are errors, I think that is not a big concern.
Discussion period: 2 weeks, deadline July 13.
Twan
______________________________**_________________ Libraries mailing list Libraries@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/**mailman/listinfo/librarieshttp://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries