H-core (was: Re: ~ patterns)

[Malcolm Wallace]

Taral <taralx at gmail.com> writes:

> On 1/31/06, Simon Marlow <simonmar at microsoft.com> wrote:
> > I've been swayed by the arguments put forward by the ~-proponents, so
> > I'm not going to champion the removal of ~ any more.
> >
> > We must find *something* to throw away though! :-)
> 
> I still like the idea of splitting Haskell' into Haskell'-core and
> Haskell'-lazy, and moving ~ and ! patterns into Haskell'-lazy.

The Haskell'98 Report already uses an informal notion of a "core"
language, into which other syntactic constructs are translated.

I think in Haskell-prime we ought to define this core precisely
and formally.

One can even imagine someone developing a pure H-core compiler, with
the fuller language implemented as a pre-processor over the top!
(I know at least one person who would prefer to write programs in
core rather than Haskell'98...)

Regards,
    Malcolm