Comment author: meyer

I think it's reasonable to assume that all the builtins have fixed signature that match the one declared as data type. We should close this PR as variable arity %apply is a bad idea. On other hand "lambda" intermediate language supports only simple single argument apply.

Comment author: @Drup

The fact that this code don't compile is fine, but the error reporting should be clearer and a type check should be done at the definition, not as the use.

Comment author: @damiendoligez

By using external, you are giving up your right to static type checking, so in my opinion you should be happy to get an error at compile-time and not a segment violation at run-time.

That said, if there is a simple way of giving a better error message, I'm in favor of implementing it.

Comment author: @mshinwell

I think there are many higher-priority items on the agenda. Furthermore, use of % primitives outside the compiler distribution is not to be encouraged---if you play with fire, you should expect to get burnt occasionally. Closing this issue; please submit a patch via Github if you feel strongly enough.