Quoth Greg Weber <g...@gregweber.info>, ... > Many of the built-in record proposals seem more ambitious (create a new > record from an existing one, generalize in some other direction). More > power or generalization could be very useful, but it can wait for later - > Haskell's records are glaringly bad because they lack name-spacing. > > I think one of the problems being faced with improving records is a false > choice between a quick but hacky library desugaring or a major "Extensible" > records built into the compiler. What I am proposing is that (unless > someone proposes a great desugaring solution) we make it the immediate goal > to have records built into the compiler, but done in the simplest (perhaps > least "Extensible") way that just accomplishes name-spacing.
It's sure easy to imagine something like that happening, in principle, but ... are you saying that extensibility specifically has been a major issue? Could be, I haven't been paying so much attention. Wouldn't extensibility more or less come along with row polymorphism? I mean, my understanding of the term is that an expression that instantiates a particular record field, can incorporate a record lacking that field, which seems to me to be implicit in row polymorphism anyway. I would think row polymorphism is a must-have. If you're interested in looking at old, Haskell-related record systems, also see O'Haskell. Donn _______________________________________________ Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list Glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users