On 09-Nov-1998, S. Alexander Jacobson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sat, 7 Nov 1998, Fergus Henderson wrote:
> > But if we have to add new syntax to make it work then it
> > is getting to be more trouble than its worth.
>
> Since the application is code generation, I don't think the extra
> syntax is a problem.
It's not a problem as far as the person writing the program that
generates Haskell is concerned. But it's a problem as far as
Haskell's language complexity is concerned: that's one more keyword
for every Haskell programmer to learn, for every Haskell book to
describe, and for every Haskell implementor to implement.
As features go, it's not a complex feature, so the cost isn't too great,
but on the other hand it would only benefit a few people (those writing
programs that generate Haskell code are much fewer than those writing
Haskell directly), and the benefit to those people would be small too,
since it would be easy for them to modify their code generators to
just keep a table mapping from the function names to their clauses and
then spit out all the functions at the end.
So on balance, I think it's more trouble than it's worth.
--
Fergus Henderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | "Binaries may die
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh> | but source code lives forever"
PGP: finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] | -- leaked Microsoft memo.
