I don't think it's highly problematic. I agree that it would be nice to have the type and value levels have a similar structure, but if there are compelling reasons to do otherwise that fine too.<br><br>You could still allow symbol type variables if they have an explicit binding occurence, which you can always(?) do with type variables.
<br><br> -- Lennart<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Dec 5, 2007 11:34 PM, Wolfgang Jeltsch <<a href="mailto:g9ks157k@acme.softbase.org">g9ks157k@acme.softbase.org</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Am Mittwoch, 5. Dezember 2007 17:05 schrieb Simon Peyton-Jones:<br>> […]<br><div class="Ih2E3d"><br>> Anyway, while on this subject, I am considering making the following<br>> change:<br>><br>> make all operator symbols into type constructors
<br>> (currently they are type variables)<br><br></div>This would be highly problematic!<br><br>Concerning syntax, everything that holds for values should also hold for<br>types. For values, identifiers starting with a capital letter and operators
<br>starting with a colon denote "constants", everything else denotes variables.<br>Exactly the same should hold for types since otherwise we would get a very<br>confusing result. So we should keep things as they are concerning type
<br>constructors and type variables. And we should think about type functions<br>being denoted by lower case identifiers and operators not starting with a<br>colon because they are similar to non-constructor functions on the value
<br>level.<br><br>We should strive for a systematic language and therefore not make ad-hoc<br>decisions which for the moment seem to serve a purpose in some specific<br>cases.<br><br>> […]<br><br>Best wishes,<br><font color="#888888">
Wolfgang<br></font><div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c">_______________________________________________<br>Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org">Glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org
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