On Jun 8, 2007, at 16:25 , Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias wrote:
Yeah, in general Haskell types don't carry constraints, however, I
don't
see the reason that this doesn't work when using type level macros, as
type F a = C a => a
should just be a macro and substitute.
It is. That's the problem.
Macros can't know anything about the contexts in which they're used.
In the type system, this translates to implicit "forall" constraints:
> type F' a = forall a. C a => a
The result of this is that a simple use like
> foo :: F a -> F a
expands the macros literally, with the implicit "forall" because the
macro expansion has to assume it is independent of everything else:
> foo' :: (forall a. C a => a) -> (forall a. C a => a)
This means the two "a"s are independent and can't be unified by the
typechecker.
In theory I suppose the simple macro expansion could be replaced by
some type expression which would allow the typechecker to recognize
that any (F a)s used in a given type can be unified, but I have no
idea what it would look like. (Then again, I'm no type hacker.) And
I find myself wondering if that would lead to problems when expanding
complex types.
--
brandon s. allbery [solaris,freebsd,perl,pugs,haskell] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
system administrator [openafs,heimdal,too many hats] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon university KF8NH
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