On Dec 14, 2011, at 8:38 AM, Thomas Schilling wrote:
> On 12 December 2011 22:39, Antoine Latter <aslat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> But now they look as if they are of equal importance with the other
>> class methods, which is not really true.
>
> Maybe, but something like this is best fixed by improving
> documentation, not by shuffling things around and needlessly breaking
> APIs. I also agree that if an Alternative instance doesn't make sense
> it should be removed. The current documentation is indeed very terse
> indeed. In particular it needs a section on the pitfalls that users
> are likely to run into (like infinite loops).
It seems that if we go down this route, though, then what we really need is a
big, bold warning at the top of the Alternative class saying something like,
"Do *not* implement this class for your type unless you *really* know what you
are doing, which will probably only true if you are writing a parser. If you
fail to heed this advice, then many and some will almost assuredly be broken
for your type, which will cause code using it to have infinite loops."
Cheers,
Greg
_______________________________________________
Haskell-Cafe mailing list
Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org
http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
