Colin writes:
Another aspect of your comment that troubles me is the strong
implication that if the default were Integer, things would not be `done
right'. Presumably you mean that it would be painful to make use of a
Prelude with Int-based standard functions? If so, then the current
design will lead to double frustration: (1) some programs will give
bizarre answers because of modulo-word-size arithmetic; (2) this will
lead programmers to request Integer as the explicit default, only to
discover that things are no longer `done right'.
I don't disagree with this. But the Haskell 98 committee already
decided to use `Int', not `Integer' or (Num a) or (Integeral a), in
prelude functions. So the prelude won't be fixed, and given that also
not fixing the `default default' seems to me to be the consistent
solution. -- P
