We want to make sure string users do not depend on the string
implementation. This is the first step.
We need this refactoring *now* to make sure it will not be
super painful to address issue #1175
This suggestion has been discussed at Slack.
We have decided to use #"c" as notation because we wanted to allow `'`
in the beginning of identifiers like in SML and F*. In particular,
we wanted to allow users to use 'a 'b 'c for naming type parameters
like in SML. However, nobody used this notation. In the Lean standard
library, we are using greek letters for naming type parameters.
So, there is no real motivation for the ugly #"c" syntax.
This is a hard coded extra case. It is not an instance of has_coe.
Even if we change has_coe to accomodate this case, it will not be a
satisfactory solution because this coercion depends on the element and
not the type, and the element usually contains metavariables.
We should eventually write a tactic for synthesizing coercions.
