Opaque types

[Joachim Durchholz]

Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
> Pattern matching for abstract data types is precisely what my
> "Abstract Patterns" paper was about.  Abstract patterns are almost
> the same as the "views" that have been proposed for Haskell, but
> "abstract pattern" is a rather clearer name.

The first thing a programmer will think about when confronted with this 
term is the Abstract Factory Pattern, a wildly unrelated concept.

Personally, I'd name the entire concept "user-defined pattern matching" 
or something similar, and use terms like "view" or "abstract data type 
pattern" only when describing concrete mechanisms.

Regards,
Jo