6.1. Introduction

As with all known Haskell systems, GHC implements some extensions to the standard Haskell language. They can all be enabled or disabled by command line flags or language pragmas. By default GHC understands the most recent Haskell version it supports, plus a handful of extensions.

Some of the extensions serve to give you access to the underlying facilities with which we implement Haskell. Thus, you can get at the Raw Iron, if you are willing to write some non-portable code at a more primitive level. You need not be “stuck” on performance because of the implementation costs of Haskell’s “high-level” features—you can always code “under” them. In an extreme case, you can write all your time-critical code in C, and then just glue it together with Haskell!

• 6.1.1. Controlling extensions
• 6.1.2. Overview of all language extensions
• 6.1.3. Summary of stolen syntax