One can always use a Maybe to make an IsString literal total. Perhaps this is what library authors should do in those cases when a fromString implementation is obviously partial.
i.e. instead of instance IsString XML where ... define: instance IsString (Maybe XML) where ... HTH, Ozgur On 24 April 2012 15:03, Yitzchak Gale <g...@sefer.org> wrote: > Daniel Peebles wrote: > > Why are potentially partial literals scarier than the fact that every > value > > in the language could lead to an exception when forced? > > That's a legitimate question, but it's strange to hear it from > you. > > People ask that same question about Haskell's static > type system. Why bother? Every value could lead to an > exception when forced. So we might as well check > everything at run time. > > Wouldn't it be ironic if the one thing that every language > other than Haskell is able to check at compile time, > namely the static syntax of string literals, could only be > checked at run time in Haskell? Especially when, with just > a little care, we could easily continue to check it at compile > time while still supporting string literals of type Text > and ByteString. > > I guess I'm just not understanding your question. > > Thanks, > Yitz >
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