  __   __ __  __  ____   ___     __________________________________________
  ||   || ||  || ||  || ||__     Hugs 1.3c: The Haskell User's Gofer System
  ||___|| ||__|| ||__||  __||    Copyright (c) Mark P Jones,
  ||---||         ___||          The University of Nottingham, 1994-1998.
  ||   ||                        Report bugs to hugs-bugs@haskell.org
  ||   ||     [March 1998]       __________________________________________


       This is the Readme file for Hugs 1.3c.


       Hugs 1.3c is an interpreter that provides an almost complete
       implementation of Haskell 1.3; the only significant feature
       that is not supported is the module system.  Many Hugs users
       will prefer to use Hugs 1.4, which is a joint project between
       the groups at Nottingham and Yale, and a direct successor to
       Hugs 1.3. Large parts of the type checker in Hugs 1.3c have
       been rewritten to give greater compatability with Haskell and
       to eliminate the special handling of overloading that was
       inherited from the implementation of Gofer.  However, there
       are a number of areas in which the changes in Hugs 1.3c will
       be more visible to users, including:

        - Overloading:  multiple parameter classes, unrestricted
          contexts, overlapping instances (if the +o command line
          option is used).

        - Rank 2 polymorphism:  primitives, user defined functions,
          class members, and data constructors can have arguments
          with polymorphic types.

        - Existential types:  Components of data structures may have
          types involving existentially quantified variables.

        - Explicitly scoped type variables (in the style of SML):
          Patterns may include type annotations, and variables
          appearing in these annotations will be visible within the
          scope of any variables defined in the pattern.

       Hugs 1.3c provides a preview of features that are expected to
       appear in future versions of Hugs, including, in the near future,
       Hugs 1.4. Hugs 1.3c should be considered as *experimental*
       software: it may contain bugs and may not provide complete
       implementations of all features.  Moreover, it is likely that
       the set of features in this release will change, and that
       restrictions in this release may be either tightened or relaxed
       in future versions.

       If you need a more stable, or more fully tested version of Hugs,
       then you are strongly encouraged to use either Hugs 1.3b, or the
       latest release of Hugs 1.4 (The January 1998 release, at the time
       of writing).

       Your feedback, comments, suggestions and bug reports are most
       welcome!  Please note however that *all* bug reports must be
       sent to hugs-bugs@haskell.org, otherwise I may not see them.
       Similarly, any other queries about Hugs should be sent to
       hugs-users@haskell.org.

______________________________________________________________________________
Mark P. Jones                                                mpj@cs.nott.ac.uk
http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/Department/Staff/mpj/index.html
Department of Computer Science, University of Nottingham, England NG7 2RD
______________________________________________________________________________
