Friends
GHC has a flag -XImpredicativeTypes that makes a half-hearted attempt to
support impredicative polymorphism. But it is vestigial…. if it works, it’s
really a fluke. We don’t really have a systematic story here at all.
I propose, therefore, to remove it entirely. That is, if you use
-XImpredicativeTypes, you’ll get a warning that it does nothing (ie. complete
no-op) and you should remove it.
Before I pull the trigger, does anyone think they are using it in a
mission-critical way?
Now that we have Visible Type Application there is a workaround: if you want to
call a polymorphic function at a polymorphic type, you can explicitly apply it
to that type. For example:
{-# LANGUAGE ImpredicativeTypes, TypeApplications, RankNTypes #-}
module Vta where
f x = id @(forall a. a->a) id @Int x
You can also leave out the @Int part of course.
Currently we have to use -XImpredicativeTypes to allow the @(forall a. a->a).
Is that sensible? Or should we allow it regardless? I rather think the
latter… if you have Visible Type Application (i.e. -XTypeApplications) then
applying to a polytype is nothing special. So I propose to lift that
restriction.
I should go through the GHC Proposals Process for this, but I’m on a plane, so
I’m going to at least start with an email.
Simon
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