>I'd like to see the numeric class hierarchy re-organized
>along lines suggested by modern algebra. That is,
>it should be organized in terms of Groups, Rings,
>Fields, etc., instead of Integral, Fractional, Real,
>etc. I have no idea how this should look exactly,
>so I'll just request it and leave it to people smarter
>than me to hammer out the details :-)
Yes, please. I would greatly appreciate this. Combining this with
exact/inexact type classes like Scheme would be wonderful.
I've played a little bit with setting up class systems along these lines.
However, I think that Haskell's type system is somewhat limited when it
comes to implementing such a hierarchy.
Interestingly enough, I started to desire things that it sounds like
dependent types would answer. (I.E. types from values, functions from
types to types, etc.) I have not gotten a chance to look at Cayenne yet.
This discussion on dependent types has certainly piqued my curiosity.
With dependent types, would it be possible to get types from values (i.e.
types that you haven't actually declared before.) One example would be the
group of integers modulo n. It sounds to me like types would then be first
class. So, concieveably, I could write a function Z : Integer -> Type,
where Z n would be the group of integers modulo n.
best,
leon
