Henning Thielemann wrote:
On Wed, 13 Sep 2006, Lennart Augustsson wrote:
I don't think Haskell really has the mechanisms for setting up an
algebraic class hierarchy the right way. Consider some classes we
might want to build: SemiGroup
Monoid
AbelianMonoid
Group
AbelianGroup
SemiRing
Ring
...
The problem is that going from, say, AbelianMonoid to SemiRing you
want to add a new Monoid (the multiplicative) to the class. So
SemiRing is a subclass of Monoid in two different way, both for +
and for *.
I don't know of any nice way to express this is Haskell.
Thanks for confirming what I wrote. :-)
If the above is equivalent to saying "Monoid is a *superclass* of SemiRing
in two different ways", then can someone explain why this approach would not
work (posted earlier):
data Multiply = Multiply
data Add = Add
class Group c e where
group :: c -> e -> e -> e
identity :: c -> e
inverse :: c -> e -> e
instance Group Multiply Rational where
group Multiply x y = ...
identity Multiply = 1
inverse Multiply x = ...
instance Group Add Rational where
group Add x y = ...
identity Add = 0
inverse Add x = ...
(+) :: Group Add a => a -> a -> a
(+) = group Add
(*) = group Multiply
class (Group Multiply a, Group Add a) => Field a where ...
If the objection is just that you can't make something a subclass in two
different ways, the above is surely a counterexample. Of course I made the
above example more fixed than it should be ie:
class (Group mult a, Group add a) => Field mult add a where ...
and only considered the relationship between groups and fields - obviously
other classes would be needed before and in-between, but perhaps the problem
is that even with extra parameters (to represent *all* the parameters in the
corresponding tuples used in maths), there is no way to get a hierarchy?
Thanks, Brian.
--
Logic empowers us and Love gives us purpose.
Yet still phantoms restless for eras long past,
congealed in the present in unthought forms,
strive mightily unseen to destroy us.
http://www.metamilk.com
_______________________________________________
Haskell-Cafe mailing list
Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org
http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
