(I'm using a fixed width font, so if you don't see nice formatting,
you need to use a fixed width font. This is literate Haskell, but I
copied and pasted the code. YMMV)
Hi Everybody! (Hi Dr. Nick)
I've been looking for a good way to use some richer notions of
polymorphism than Haskell98 allows.
First, I tried to define a monad "of" the things I want to quantify
over (so each "type of view" or "type of evaluable thing" would be a
constructor in a monadic type.) But that didn't seem to offer the
kind of extensibility I wanted, since I basically want to join several
types together. I tried FunDeps next, and that worked okay, but it
was a bit difficult to keep track of what was "meant" to do what. I
guess I could have plowed through the work, but it wasn't any fun.
I finally heard about TypeFamilies, and they seem to give me the kind
of extensibility I want, while keeping the theoretical foundations
relatively clean.
But I am not so sure I understand them. Let us consider the code:
> type AbstractValue = Int
> class Evaluate asset where
> data Value asset :: *
> value :: (Value asset) -> AbstractValue
That's easy enough. "Value asset" is an indexed type. That is
reflected in the instance declaration:
> instance Evaluate Abstract where
> data Value Abstract = AbstractValue Abstract
> value (AbstractValue int) = int
Okay, easy enough. But what happens when we want to "add" Evaluate
instances?
> data Add a b = Add a b
> instance ( Evaluate a
> , Evaluate b
> ) => Evaluate (Add a b) where
> data Value (Sum a b) = SumValue (Sum a b)
Even this much is straightforward. We require a and b to be
Evaluate'able before we can find the sum of a and b as "values". Now
I want to write my definition for the "value" function. But... how is
that supposed to work? My first guess is
value (SumValue (Sum a b)) = (value a) + (value b)
But I more-or-less expected that to fail. I realize I need some more
typing information. What am I supposed to fill in? My next guess was
> value (SumValue (Sum a b)) = (value $ Value a) + (value $ Value
b)
But Value doesn't exist as a type constructor. So now that I am
starting to "get" what's going on, I wonder why I don't get what's
going on. Since I need to use a type constructor for the (Value a)
and (Value b) "things", it kind of defeats the point. (I hesitate to
say "value", since I have been using "value" to mean the result/blah
of an Evaluate instance)
Speaking of which, I am still not sure what the difference between
associate data type families and associated type constructor families
are. The former use the data keyword in class declarations, and the
latter use type keywords. What can I do with one and not the other?
I would really appreciate some guidance.
Thanks!
Alex
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