[Haskell-cafe] Re: develop new Haskell shell?

[Brian Hulley]

Udo Stenzel wrote:
> I'd like one as a scripting environment, a bit like scsh, just strongly
> typed and easier on the eyes.  Haskell as interactive shell would be a
> nightmare indeed, having to type 'system "foo"' instead of simply 'foo'
> for everyday commands just won't cut it.

This seems to be your only objection. It might be solvable by making some 
rule that an identifier that's used in a value position would be 
automatically bound to a function/value found by instantiating to a binary 
in the file system if it's not already bound, and there would need to be 
some rules about how binaries would work to cooperate with the Haskell type 
system.

Another approach, to allow GHCi to be used as a shell immediately (given the 
right module with useful commands like ls, cat etc which could be written 
right now) would be to just have a shorter name for "system" eg what about:

%  #"foo"

Just think: three extra characters but an infinity of new possibilities..... 
:-)

Regards, Brian.