Ross Paterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Wed, Mar 01, 2006 at 08:26:14AM +0000, Henrik Nilsson wrote: > > I'm increasingly convinced that the records should be left alone for > > Haskell', possibly modulo some minor tweaks to polish the system. > > Yes, no alternative candidate is available (specified, implemented, > used).
Well, there _are_ some alternatives that have been specified and implemented e.g. TREX in Hugs, and experimental languages like Daan Leijen's Morrow. But the main reason I can see for there being little use of these candidates, is that they are not compatible with current Haskell. Thus, although I agree that none is ready for inclusion in Haskell-prime, I think we do need some mechanism for experimental records to be tried out in real Haskell implementations before the Haskell-double-prime committee starts its work. Perhaps, taking the extensions-layering idea, we could say that the current named-fields are encapsulated as an "extension that is part of the standard". Implementations could then introduce a flag to switch off this particular extension (current records) in conjunction with flags to switch on experimental replacements. This would give a certain flexibility for users to play with different systems, and the breaking of compatibility would be explicitly notated, either by the build options, or using a proposal like ticket #94. My suggestion is that we separate out everything from the Report to do with named-field records into something like a self-contained addendum. Whilst still an official part of the language standard, it might also be marked as a possibility for future removal. This would make it clear what parts of the language could be changed (or re-used without conflict) in an alternative records system. Regards, Malcolm _______________________________________________ Haskell-prime mailing list Haskell-prime@haskell.org http://haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-prime