[m-dev.] syntax proposals

[Thomas Conway]

On Wed, Nov 07, 2001 at 08:38:22PM EST, David Jeffery wrote:
> > Another alternative might be something like:
> > 
> > :- begin_typeclass c(T).
> > :- func f(T) = int.
> > :- pred p(T).
> > :- mode p(in) is semidet.
> > :- end_typeclass c(T).
> 
> Interestingly, this is almost exactly the syntax Ioriginally 
> proposed for type classes in Mercury many, many 
> years ago. (Gee I feel old now).
> 
> At the time, the reason people rejected this syntax was
> that is was fealt that a single entity such as a type class 
> declaration should be a single syntactic entity (and 
> hence the current one was born). I'm not sure that this
> was actually very solid reasoning --- after all, we have
> no problem with representing a module by a series
> of terms rather than one massive term.

I would argue that this means that we got the module system
syntax wrong, not the other way round. ML uses a single syntactic
entity for module declarations, and it is nice.

my 2c,
Thomas
-- 
  Thomas Conway )O+
 <conway at cs.mu.oz.au>       499 User error! Replace user, and press any key.
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