| This is the first time I've looked at (b), so I don't mind it going,
| but the syntax info deserves its own section, to be easy to find
| without blowing up the flag reference section.
Interesting. Any suggestions about where would be "easy to find"?
Or what the section would look like. Would you like to draft it?
Then I'd go through for accuracy.
I think the reason I never looked at 8.1 is that, even for what
it says it does, there are more direct sources: if I want an overview,
I go to 5.17.12, if I want the details, I go to 8.n (n>1). So I never
had a reason to look up 8.1, so I never knew it offered syntax diffs
as well (something I have looked for on occasion).
So, one could retarget 8.1 to be a summary of "New and stolen syntax"
(the new syntax elements are explained at the beginning of each 8.n,
but in so much detail that the stolen syntax aspect would be lost there).
That title might have led me to look into the section, although I'd
probably have searched for the information in some 13.1a, so I'm
completely undecided which of the two would make the best location.
But then, I wouldn't want this kind of information to be written into
those sections by hand anyway: stolen syntax/new syntax ought to be
part of the centralised flag description, and automatically extracted
from there, perhaps even into both 8.1 and 13.1a (if they have the
same generated uptodate text, duplication isn't much of a problem).
Something like:
13.1a Haskell 98 vs. Glasgow Haskell: New and stolen syntax
Section 13.1 describes issues in how close working with GHC
can come to working with Haskell 98. There is, however, the
not entirely separate issue of how GHC's language extensions
interact with Haskell 98 programs when you want to go beyond
Haskell 98. There is new syntax, only available when a language
extension is enabled, but there are also a few cases where enabling
a language extension re-interprets existing syntax, which can lead
to awkward misinterpretations.
If you encounter an unknown piece of syntax, this section will
help you to identify which language extension it belongs to. If you
run into trouble with Haskell 98 code after switching on a language
extension, this section will try to tell you why that happens and how
to work around it. After browsing this section, you should be able
to spot potentially troublesome syntax, and to write your Haskell 98
code in a way that will continue to work if language extensions are
enabled.
<flag-specific parts, extracted from central file, showing new and
stolen syntax, suggested syntax rewrites to avoid misinterpretations;
links to sections explaining details>
All GHC language extensions are documented in detail in section 8.
The Flag Reference, section 5.17.12 gives an overview of language
options enabling or disabling these extensions.
Claus
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