Malcolm Wallace wrote:
Phil proposes that, although retaining the instances of Enum for Float
and Double, we simplify the definitions of the numericEnumFrom family:
numericEnumFromThenTo :: (Fractional a, Ord a) => a -> a -> a -> [a]
numericEnumFrom = iterate (+1)
numericEnumFromThen n m = iterate (+(m-n)) n
numericEnumFromTo n m = takeWhile (<= m) (numericEnumFrom n)
numericEnumFromThenTo n m p = takeWhile (<= p) (numericEnumFromThen n m)
I'll leave it to the floating-point experts to decide exactly what to do
here for Haskell' (but I note that David Roundy's version looks better than
the iterate version above, because the errors won't accumulate).
But as maintainer and bug-fixer of the Haskell'98 Report, I have also
been asked whether we should make this change retrospectively to the
Haskell'98 language (as a "typo"). Since it involves not merely an
ordinary library function, but a Prelude function, and moreover a
function that is used in the desugaring of syntax, it is less clear to
me whether to alter Haskell'98.
We definitely can't make breaking changes to Haskell 98; this would be much
more than a "typo".
However, this does give us a problem if we decide to make a change here for
H', as Neil points out, because there would be two mutually-incompatible
instances for Enum Float. We'd need to have a clear distinction between
programs that are Haskell 98 and those that are not, with only the former
allowed to use the haskell98 package.
Cheers,
Simon
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