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Fwd: Re: [Caml-list] The boon of static type checking

Jon Harrop
- skaller
- Juancarlo_Añez
  - William D.Neumann
    - Erik de Castro Lopo
      - Radu Grigore
        
        Erik de Castro Lopo
  - Jon Harrop
    - Aaron Bohannon
      - Richard Jones
        
        Eric C. Cooper
  - Richard Jones
    - Juancarlo_Añez
    - Richard Jones
  - brogoff

Date:	-- (:)
From:	brogoff <brogoff@s...>
Subject:	Re: [Caml-list] String to list to string

On Wed, 9 Feb 2005, [iso-8859-1] Juancarlo Añez wrote:
> Why aren't there functions in the standard library to convert strings to
> lists of characters and back?

Because it's a bad idea. This has been discussed numerous times in this
mailing list, and if the mailing list search engine actually worked (like it
used to a few years ago) I'd tell you to search the archives.

> Haskell treats strings as lists of chars by default.

Just goes to show you that even really smart people can do some amazingly dumb
things.

Take a look at the SML Basis Library substrings for a smarter functional
approach to this issue.

-- Brian