"Simon Marlow"
While the behaviour might arguably be wrong, I believe it's more important to stick to the letter of the Haskell 98 spec, at least so that Haskell 98 compilers are compatible with each other. By all means emit a warning in this case (GHC does if you add -fwarn-name-shadowing), but it shouldn't be an error.
OK, you have persuaded me. The bug is fixed in CVS, and here is the patch. Regards, Malcolm Index: src/compiler98/Rename.hs =================================================================== RCS file: /home/cvs/root/nhc98/src/compiler98/Rename.hs,v retrieving revision 1.28 diff -u -r1.28 Rename.hs --- src/compiler98/Rename.hs 12 Nov 2002 11:56:51 -0000 1.28 +++ src/compiler98/Rename.hs 27 May 2003 10:54:53 -0000 @@ -459,12 +459,14 @@ let decls = groupFun decls' in pushScope >>> mapS0 (bindPat Var) pats >>> + pushScope >>> bindDecls decls >>> renameDecls decls >>>= \newdecls -> -- do first, to get infix right unitS Fun =>>> mapS renameExp pats =>>> renameRhs rhs =>>> unitS newdecls >>> + popScope >>> popScope