[m-dev.] for review: enable support for explicit type qualifi ers

[Fergus Henderson]

On 21-Sep-2000, Ralph Becket <rbeck at microsoft.com> wrote:
> >From Fergus Henderson on 21/09/2000 06:16:14
> > On 20-Sep-2000, Ralph Becket <rbeck at microsoft.com> wrote:
> > > Any chance of inline type specifiers turning up soon?
> > 
> > Sure.  The long-term aim is probably to use ":" as the
> > operator for this, but it's easy enough to enable this
> > feature in the mean time.  For now, I propose we just use
> > "`with_type`" as the operator.  When we change it to use
> > `:', we can easily keep the old name as an alternative
> > for backwards compatibility.
> 
> I'll follow up with a review, but isn't it about time we made
> the change?

Which change?

> I've only ever seen two pieces of toy code that
> use `:' as the module name separator rather than `__', so we
> should be able to safely steal `:' as a synonym for `with_type`.

I think we should try to avoid stealing `:' until we have added
support for `.' as module qualifier, because we don't want to make
anyone have to change their source code _twice_ (once from `:' to
`__', and then again from `__' to `.').

I suppose you could ask in mercury-users to see if anyone minds.

> Presumably fixing the error reporting in the compiler
> is a one-line job?

I think it's lots of one-line fixes.

> I volunteer to do the job, if this is all there is to it.

Good!

-- 
Fergus Henderson <fjh at cs.mu.oz.au>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>  |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger fjh at 128.250.37.3        |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.
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