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Name conflicts on Hackage

Attention Conservation Notice. Unqualified identifiers that are used the most on Hackage.

Perhaps you dread the error message:

Ambiguous occurrence `lookup'
It could refer to either `Prelude.lookup', imported from Prelude
                      or `Data.Map.lookup', imported from Data.Map

It is the message of the piper that has come to collect his dues for your unhygenic unqualified unrestricted module import style.

Or perhaps your a library writer and trying to think up of a new symbol for your funky infix combinator, but you aren't sure what other libraries have used already.

I took the archive (TAR) of the latest Hackage packages for everything, whipped up a script to extract all unqualified names exported by public modules, and then counted up the most used.

Disclaimer. Data constructors and record fields, unless they were explicitly exported, are not included in this count. I also don't count modules that export everything from the global namespace because they omitted a list of names to export. Counts are per module, and not per package. CPP and HSC files were not counted, due to limitations of haskell-src-exts.

Top twenty identifiers (as of September 2, 2012).

106 empty
69 insert
69 toList
66 fromList
56 null
54 singleton
44 run
42 encode
41 decode
41 delete
39 size
37 theModule
35 member
32 parse
31 get
30 lookup
30 union
29 Name
29 space
28 Node

Top twenty infix operators (as of September 2, 2012).

25 !
19 <>
17 <+>
14 </>
11 <$>
10 //
10 ><
 9 .:
 9 <$$>
 9 ∅
 8 &
 8 .=
 8 <?>
 8 <||>
 8 \\
 8 |>
 7 #
 7 $$
 7 *.
 7 <->

The exclamation mark has earned the reputation as an "indexing" operator, and unsurprisingly is at the top. I hear from Edward Kmett that <> is making its way into the base as mappend, which is welcome, although might suck for the other six modules which redefined it for their own nefarious purposes.

All infix operators, sorted by usage and then lexicographically (as of September 2, 2012).

! <> <+> </> <$> // >< .: <$$> ∅ & .= <?> <||> \\ |> # $$ *. <-> <. <//>
<| <|> ==> >. ||. ∈ ∉ !! &&. ++ +++ /=. <=. =: ==. >=. ∋ ∌ ∩ ∪ .|. :->
<: ? ∆ ∖ .&. .* .-. <&> <.> << === ?? @@ \/ ^^ |+ |- ||| ~~ !!! !> !? ##
$+$ += +> -<- .*. .:? .<. .==. .>. /=? /\ :- :> :~> <$?> <+< <=> <=? <?
<|?> =. ==? =~ >-> >=? >? @# ^ ~> ¬ ∘ ∧ ∨ ≡ ≢ ⊂ ⊃ ⊄ ⊅ ⊆ ⊇ ⊈ ⊉ !: $# $>
$~ % %> && &&? &= ** *|* + --> ->- -| . .!= .!=. .&&. .&.? .*> .+ .++.
.+. ... ./. ./\. .:: .<=. .=. .=> .>=. .\/. .| .||. :* :+ :. := :=: <*.
<*> <++ <++> <..> <:> <<|> <== <|*|> =$= >+> >=> >>>= >|< ?> ?>= @@@ ^#
^$ ^: ^^^ |* || ||* ||+ ||? ~: ~? ≠   ≮ ≯ ⊕ ⧺ !$ !$? !. !=. !>>= #! #!!
#~~ $ $! $$$ $$$? $$+ $$++ $$+- $$= $- $. $.// $/ $// $= $=! $? $| $~!
%% %&& %+ %/= %: %< %<= %== %>= %|| &#& &&& &+ &. &.// &/ &// &=# &> &@
&| * *! *& *&&&* *&* ***** ****/* ****/*** ****//* ****//*** ****|*
****|*** ****||* ****||*** ***/* ***/** ***/**** ***//* ***//**
***//**** ***|* ***|** ***|**** ***||* ***||** ***||**** **. **/* **/***
**//* **//*** **> **|* **|*** **||* **||*** */* */** */*** */**** *//*
*//** *//*** *//**** *<<<* *=* *=. *=>* *> *>>>* *? *@ *^ *|** *|***
*|**** *||* *||** *||*** *||**** +% ++. ++> ++>> ++@ +/+ +: +:+ +=. +>>
+@ +^ +| - -!- -$ -->> -/\- -: -< -<< -<=- -=. -=> ->> -?- -?-> -?> -?>>
-@ -\/- -^ -|- -~> .! .# .$. .- .--. .->. .... ./ ./= ./=. .:. .::: .<
.<<. .<= .== .>>. .@ .@$ .@~ .\. .|| .~ .~. / /+/ /- /. /<-. /=: />/ /^
/| /~ /~? :*: :+: :-: :<-> :<: :<=: :<> :<~> :=+ :><: :~ <! <#$> <$| <%
<&&> <* <+ <-$ <-- <-. <-: </=? <<! <</ <<: <<< <<? <<\ <<| <<~ <=! <=:
<==? <=@ <=@@ <>>= <?< <??> <@ <@> <@@ <~ =$ =$$= =*= =/= =< =<< =<<!
=<<< =<= =<>= =<? ==! =>> =~= =≪ >! >$$< >$< >*> >-- >-< >: >:> >=! >=:
>== >===> >=>=> >=@ >=@@ >> >>-> >>. >>= >>=# >>== >>=\/ >>=|\/ >>=||
>>=||| >>> >>@ >?> >@ >@@ >||< ?! ?+ ?/= ?: ?< ?<= ?= ?== @! @= @==? @=?
@? @?= @?== \== ^% ^-^ ^. ^>>= ^@ ^^. |#| |$> |*| |-> |-| |. |/ |// |:
|<- |= |=> |=| |? |@ |\ |\\ |||| ~/= ~== ~=? ~?= ~|||~ ~||~ ~|~ ~~# ~~>
~~? ~~~> · ·× × ×· ÷ ⇒ ⇔ ∀ ∃ ≫ ≫= ⊛ ⊥ ⊨ ⊭ ⊲ ⊳ ⋅ ⋈ ⋘ ⋙ ▷ ◁ ★

It's a veritable zoo! (I'm personally reminded of Nethack.)

Source. The horrifying code that drove this exercise can be found at Github. I used the following shell one-liner:

for i in *; do for j in $i/*; do cd $j; tar xf *.tar.gz; cd ../..; done; done

to extract all of the tarballs inside the tar file.

Postscript. It would be neat if someone could fix the discrepancies that I described earlier and do a more comprehensive/correct search over this space.

9 Responses to “Name conflicts on Hackage”

  1. Ivan Lazar Miljenovic says:

    “I also don’t count modules that export everything from the global namespace because they omitted where. ”

    As far as I know, all module declarations _must_ contain “where”; what they don’t have to contain is an explicit export list. Is that what you meant?

  2. Anonymous says:

    This is a really great idea – thanks for doing this.

    Is the FFI code in HackageCollision.hs simply for efficiency?

  3. Lazar, yes that’s what I mean. Whoops!

    Anonymous, the file reading code I cribbed from this page: http://users.aber.ac.uk/afc/stricthaskell.html#semiclosed

  4. Ivan Lazar Miljenovic says:

    Well, my first name is “Ivan”, not “Lazar” :p (and I’m the guy that goes by “ivanm” on #haskell).

  5. Double-oops. :o)

  6. Roel van Dijk says:

    Unicode operators are curiously missing from you overview of all infix operators. It might be because packages that use them usually also use the UnicodeSyntax language extension, which can’t be parsed by haskell-src. Would be interesting to try it with the haskell-src-exts package.

  7. Ivan Lazar Miljenovic says:

    Wow, if you’re only using haskell-src (I admit I hadn’t looked at your code), I wonder what proportion of packages on Hackage you’ve actually analysed…

  8. Ben Millwood says:

    Seems like you’ve switched to HSE now, but not even that can handle CPP… I wonder if a “stupid” parser would not be better?

  9. Yes, the CPP and also HSC files give HSE a bit of trouble. I also can’t tell if HSE is actually picking up Unicode operators… (but I am too lazy to roll my own parser…)

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