On 5/3/05, S. Alexander Jacobson <alex <at> alexjacobson.com> wrote: > Problem: We need a way to simplify module imports. > Idea: Allow module relative imports in a manner that does not break > any existing code.
I almost want "import Text.HaXML.XML.{Types,Escape,Pretty}", but not quite. And that would not be nice for qualified imports, anyway.
Maybe something like from Text.HaXML.XML import (Types, Escape, Pretty) would be nice.
That's really funny. Some 4th year students here just finished a project under my supervision that I called 'SJ' for 'Short Java', where the basic premise was that most Java code is unecessarily verbose. One of the 'low hanging fruit' for shortening were import declarations. I had advised the students to go with something that would be the equivalent of
import Text.HaXML.XML.{Types|Escape|Pretty}
but they chose something a bit worse than that.
Of course, the project aimed for more substantial 'shortenings', but the end-result was very unsatisfying as this particular group didn't "get it". I will try again next year, hopefully with a bigger group.
Jacques
PS: I tried to get them to use Parsec and write their own pretty-printer for in Haskell, but gave up on that because of the weakness of the group. They ended up using ANTLR (good) and some awful Java pretty-printer that was quite buggy :-(
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