Lennart Augustsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Should Haskell also provide unrestricted side effects, setjmp/ > longjmp, missile launching functions, etc? After all, people who > don't want to use them can just avoid them. :)
Yes. It is indeed a common problem that programs have unintended behavior, and partial functions are only the tip of the iceberg. We can keep patching things up. For instance, 'head' can be made to never fail simply by requiring all lists to be infinite. Similarly, fromJust can be fixed by having 'data Maybe a = Just a', and doing away with 'Nothing', which is hardly useful for anything anyway. But this is only superficial patchwork that glosses over the deeper problem. I therefore propose that all functions should either be of type '() -> ()', or non-terminating. That should avoid most error messages, I think, and make it very easy to avoid any unintended consequences - and the programmer is relieved of the burden of actively avoiding dangerous stuff. Is it possible to implement this for Haskell'? -k -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
