Core Lint = complete typechecker?

[Tim Chevalier]

On 2/26/08, Stefan O'Rear <stefanor at cox.net> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 10:50:56AM -0800, Tim Chevalier wrote:
>  > Hi all,
>  >
>  > I've been wondering whether the Core Lint pass  (that is, what gets
>  > invoked when you run GHC with -dcore-lint) is a complete typechecker
>  > for Core. That is, as far as you know, is it possible to construct a
>  > Core AST that will pass Core Lint but segfault at runtime? I was
>  > fairly sure I had been able to do this in the past and that the Core
>  > Lint pass was not meant to be complete, but I'm not sure and can't
>  > find documentation either way.
>
>
> You can write Haskell that passes core lint and crashes at runtime.
>
>  http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/1496
>

Good point, but that is a known bug rather than an intentional aspect
of the design of Core Lint, am I right? I'm more so trying to figure
out whether Core Lint was *intended* to be a real typechecker or just
a sanity pass, or not.

Cheers,
Tim

-- 
Tim Chevalier * http://cs.pdx.edu/~tjc * Often in error, never in doubt
"Of the seven deadly sins, lust is definitely the pick of the litter."
 -- Tom Robbins