apfelmus wrote: > I mean, if the problem is indeed to store all known > planets in the universe, then it's indeed a database in nature and you > have to support fine grained operations like > > delete :: Key -> Database -> Database > insert :: Key -> Item -> Database -> Database > ... and so on ... > > (Note that some proposals like > > changeGalaxies $ changePlanet 0 $ changeName $ const "first" > > or functional references can be interpreted as keys for 'insert' or > 'delete'. I mean that this expression already is the key to look up a > planet inside the universe, it's just that this key has a rather unusual > type. And that you can compose keys.)
Here's an elaboration of the last remark which gives a Haskell-98 way to compose keys for "nested" finite maps (like Map k (Map k' a)). It's inspired by functional references and similar to the type-class approach. The problem we want to solve is to access/change/delete values of type 'a' in a nested map like say Data.Map k (Data.Map k' a). Here, k and k' are known as "keys", but we will redefine the notion "key" shortly. The basic observation is that we need a pair (k,k') to access a value of type 'a', just like accessing a file via an absolute path requires a sequence of directory names. Directories can be "composed" via the well known slash '/' and that's what we're going to do as well: </> :: Key m m' -> Key m' a -> Key m a Here, a value of type data Key m a = ... -- abstract for now means that it's a key to access values of type 'a' in a finite map of type 'm' that stores theses values. In other words, we are given operations lookup :: Key m a -> m -> Maybe a insert :: Key m a -> a -> m -> m delete :: Key m a -> m -> m ... to change the finite map at a particular key. Of course, we already have concrete keys k for Data.Map k a. We can turn those into abstract keys via a given embedding at :: k -> Key (Data.Map k a) a Now, how to implement Key? The observation is that all operations on keys take them as their first argument which means that we can implement them as record selectors! For maximum generality, we use the following data Key m a = Key { lookup :: m -> Maybe a , singleton :: a -> m , alter :: (Maybe a -> Maybe a) -> m -> m } Here, 'alter' combines the functionality of insert, delete and adjust, which can be implemented as follows: insert k x = update k $ const $ Just x delete k = update k $ const $ Nothing adjust k f = update k $ fmap f Key composition is readily implemented as k </> k' = Key { lookup = \m -> lookup k m >>= lookup k' , singleton = \x -> singleton k (singleton k' x) , alter = \f m -> alter k (alter' f) m } where alter' f (Just m') = Just $ alter k' f m' alter' f Nothing = f Nothing >>= singleton k' Finally, we can implement keys for a concrete finite map implementation at :: k -> Key (Data.Map k a) a at k = Key { lookup = Data.Map.lookup k , singleton = Data.Map.singleton k , alter = flip Data.Map.alter k } As an example, we have Just "Earth" == lookup (at "Milky Way" </> at "Sun") universe assuming that universe :: Data.Map String (Data.Map String String) Regards, apfelmus _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe