On Tue, 8 Jun 2021, at 6:36 PM, Richard Eisenberg wrote:
I've been very much of two minds in this debate: On the one hand, having these constraints is very practically useful. On the other, what we're doing here is very un-Haskellish, in that we're letting operational concerns leak into a declarative property (a function's type). The reason we're doing this is another un-Haskellish thing -- partiality -- but that ship has sailed.

So, may I propose a slightly different way forward?

Instead of adding a HasCallStack constraint on these functions, add an IsPartial constraint. For example:

> head :: IsPartial => [a] -> a

This is slightly awkward, still, because IsPartial is a class-constraint-like-thing, but it has no parameter. But it has a few very nice properties:
* IsPartial is declarative: it describes a property of the function without worrying about its operation.
* If we think about the way constraints propagate, IsPartial has the right semantics: the caller of a partial function would itself become partial.

I don't think this is true.

Take:

foo :: Int -> Bool
foo _ = head [True]

Clearly foo is total - it is defined for all of its inputs. That it uses a partial function in its body isn't observable. So it's a shame that IsPartial leaks out.

I guess here you'd have me say

foo _ = partialityIsOk $ head [True]

?

Ollie