Re: String to Integer conversion?

[Matthew Heaney <matthew_heaney@acm.org>]

dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:

> Sure, no one contests that it is often useful to do I/O on Duration values,
> but that observation is not enough to justify putting a predefined package
> for this purpose. It is also useful to sort integers, or do a binary
> search, or or or or or ..... but we do not expect there to be predefined
> packages for all possible useful things in advance

Agreed, but here's another argument.  My _expectation_ was that there
would be a predefined instantiation for type Duration, because other
types in Standard had predefined instantations.  If it's natural for me
to expect something to be there, then maybe it should be there.  Maybe.