Why GHC doesn't warn about LHS nullary-constructor pattern bindings?

Herbert Valerio Riedel hvr at gnu.org
Thu Jul 19 12:50:02 CEST 2012


Hello,

Recently, I was a bit suprised that GHC didn't warn about useless
`where` definitions such as the following when using `-Wall` (and I
couldn't find a respective warning GHC CLI flag which would have enabled
reporting a warning in this case -- unless I missed it)

  module Foo where
  
  foo :: Int -> Int
  foo n = n + 1
    where
      Nothing = Just n

...wouldn't it be a sensible thing for GHC to warn in such cases
(i.e. when the LHS of a pattern binding is a nullary constructor), or is
there a useful application for this construct?

(In my original case, I ended up with such a "dead" construct after some
"unsound" code refactoring, and it would have helped me catch my error
earlier, if GHC would have pointed out that somethings fishy with my
code)



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