On Thu, Mar 08, 2012 at 11:00:34AM +0100, Christopher Done wrote: > On 8 March 2012 10:53, Simon Hengel <s...@typeful.net> wrote: > > When writing library code that should work with both String and Text I > > find my self repeatedly introducing classes like: > > > > class ToString a where > > toString :: a -> String > > > > class ToText a where > > toText :: a -> Text > > Text is already an instance of IsString which provides IsString.
What exactly do you mean? > I've defined ToString in my own projects though, it would be nice for > it to be defined somewhere (Data.String maybe?). We could write a proposal to add ToString to base (maybe a good idea, not sure). ToString has a striking similarity with Show, but it's still different: * toString converts some a to a String * show gives a string _representation_ of some a (e.g. converting a String to a String is just id and hence different from show; this is akin to Python's __str__/__repr__) But this does still not help with toText. Cheers, Simon _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe