Hello. I'm trying to apply the nested regions (as in Lightweight Monadic
Regions by Oleg Kiselyov and Chung-chieh Shan) design pattern, if that's the
proper term. I was hoping to gain a bit more type safety in this little library
I'm working on -- Streaming Component Combinators, available on Hackage. I
guess the problem is that I'm getting too much type safety now, because I can't
get the thing to compile. Most of the existing code works, the only exceptions
seem to be various higher-order functions. I've reduced the problem to several
lines of Literate Haskell code below, can anybody think of a solution or a
reason there can't be one?
> {-# LANGUAGE MultiParamTypeClasses, EmptyDataDecls, Rank2Types #-}
> {-# LANGUAGE FunctionalDependencies, FlexibleInstances, IncoherentInstances
> #-}
> module Main where
> main = undefined
I'll call the main type, originally a monad transformer, simply Region. I'm
leaving out the Monad and MonadTransformer instances, because they don't
contribute to the problem. The parameter r is the phantom region type.
> newtype Region r a = Region a
The Ancestor class is used to denote relationship between two regions where one
is nested in another.
> data Child r
> class Ancestor r r'
> instance Ancestor r (Child r)
> instance Ancestor r1 r2 => Ancestor r1 (Child r2)
Handle is a simple wrapper around a value. It carries information about the
region that originates the value.
> data Handle r x = Handle x
A typical calculation in the Region monad will take a bunch of Handles
inherited from an Ancestor region and do something with them. The Ancestor
constraint is there to ensure that the handles are not fake but genuinely
inherited.
> type SingleHandler x y = forall r1s rs. Ancestor r1s rs =>
> Handle r1s x -> Region rs y
> type DoubleHandler x y z = forall r1d r2d rd. (Ancestor r1d rd, Ancestor r2d
> rd) =>
> Handle r1d x -> Handle r2d y -> Region rd z
And now I'm getting to the problem. The following higher-order function doesn't
type-check:
> mapD :: (SingleHandler x z -> SingleHandler y z)
> -> DoubleHandler x w z -> DoubleHandler y w z
> mapD f d = \y w-> f (\x-> d x w) y
I get the same error from GHC 6.8.2 and 6.8.2:
Test.lhs:36:28:
Could not deduce (Ancestor r2d rs)
from the context (Ancestor r1s rs)
arising from a use of `d' at Test.lhs:36:28-32
Possible fix:
add (Ancestor r2d rs) to the context of
the polymorphic type
`forall r1s rs. (Ancestor r1s rs) => Handle r1s x -> Region rs z'
In the expression: d x w
In the first argument of `f', namely `(\ x -> d x w)'
In the expression: f (\ x -> d x w) y
The same code compiles just fine if all the Ancestor constraints are removed. I
don't see any place to add the extra (Ancestor r2d rs) constraint, as GHC
recommends. I think it ought to be able to figure things out based on the
exisisting constraints, but I may be wrong: perhaps higher-order functions pose
an insurmountable problem for type-level programming in Haskell. Can anybody
shed any light on this?
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