Thanks to those who responded to this thread about 'deriving'. My current thoughts
are:
* I'd be happy to add the ability to separate a 'deriving' clause
from its data type declaration, if we can agree syntax
(see below). It's fairly easy to do; it makes the language more
orthogonal; it's useful.
But in fact I think only Martin Sjögren has explicitly said that
the feature would be useful.... and every feature has a cost.
* I'm not at all keen on making '..deriving( Foo )' mean
$(derive 'Foo) or something like that. Just make the TH
call yourself!
* No one is arguing hard for instance declarations in hi-boot
files, so let's leave that for now.
Re syntax, the obvious possibility (A) is to add
derive( pred1, .., predn )
as a new top-level declaration. E.g.
derive( Typeable (T a) )
But that means adding 'derive' as a keyword. Other possibilities:
deriving( Typeable (T a) )
-- (B) Re-use 'deriving' keyword
The trouble with (B) is that the thing inside the parens is different in this
situation than in a data type declaration.
Any other ideas?
Simon
_______________________________________________
Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users
