Brian Hulley wrote:
Hi -
I've started work on an initial factoring of sequence ops into
[snip]
class Foldable c a | c -> a where
foldR :: (a -> b -> b) -> b -> c -> b
[snip]
There is a general problem that when the element type needs to be
specified along with the type of the overall collection, there is no
way to talk about the functor type at the same time
After writing this I realised it was a bit silly of me to have used a fundep
when I could have just specified the functor types directly (instead of the
resulting collection) thus:
class Foldable f a where
foldR :: (a -> b -> b) -> b -> f a -> b
so I applied this change to everything then wrote:
module Duma.Data.Class.Functor
( Functor(..)
) where
import Prelude hiding (map, Functor)
import Duma.Data.Class.BasicSeq
class Functor f a b where
fmap :: (a -> b) -> f a -> f b
instance (BasicSeq f a, BasicSeq f b) => Functor f a b where
fmap = map
Now surely such an absolutely clear and straightforward instance decl would
cause no problems at all, but guess what? Yes, even without fundeps and
attempts to pattern match against the components of a type, GHC can't handle
it because it needs at least one non-type variable in the instance head or
else the dreaded -f-allow-undecidable-instances.
I wonder why there needs to be a distinction between type variables and
non-type-variables because I'd have thought that the whole point of
restricted polymorphism is that there's supposed to be a continuum between a
fully unrestricted polymorphic type and a fully concrete type, with
constraints like (BasicSeq f a) "partially solidifying" (f) and (a).
The good news is that even though the Functor class can't be implemented,
(fmap) can at least now be implemented within BasicSeq:
class Foldable s a => BasicSeq s a where
map :: BasicSeq t b => (a -> b) -> s a -> t b
map f xs =
case viewL xs of
Just (x, xs') -> pushL (f x) (map f xs')
Nothing -> empty
fmap :: BasicSeq s b => (a -> b) -> s a -> s b
fmap = map
Anyway it's interesting that there does not yet appear to be a proper
solution (ie to give us Foldable, BasicSeq, and Functor all with restricted
polymorphism) with the type system as it stands at present unless
"dangerous" flags are used.
Regards, 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
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