Hi Dan, I am still pretty new in Haskell, but this problem annoys me already.
If I define certain monad as a type synonym: type StateA a = StateT SomeState SomeMonad a Then I can't declare new monad based on the synonym: type StateB a = StateT SomeOtherState StateA a The only way I know to overcome is to declare StateA without `a': type StateA = StateT SomeState SomeMonad But it is not always possible with existing code base. I am sorry, if this is offtopic, but it seemed to me that the problem is realted to partially applied type synomyms you described. Thanks! Dmitry On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 10:59 PM, Dan Doel <dan.d...@gmail.com> wrote: > Greetings, > > In the process of working on a Haskell-alike language recently, Ed > Kmett and I realized that we had (without really thinking about it) > implemented type synonyms that are a bit more liberal than GHC's. With > LiberalTypeSynonyms enabled, GHC allows: > > type Foo a b = b -> a > type Bar f = f String Int > > baz :: Bar Foo > baz = show > > because Bar expands to saturate Foo. However, we had also implemented > the following, which fails in GHC: > > type Foo a b = b -> a > type Bar f = f (Foo Int) (Foo Int) > type Baz f g = f Int -> g Int > > quux :: Bar Baz > quux = id > > That is: type synonyms are allowed to be partially applied within > other type synonyms, as long as similar transitive saturation > guarantees are met during their use. > > I don't know how useful it is, but I was curious if anyone can see > anything wrong with allowing this (it seems okay to me after a little > thought), and thought I'd float the idea out to the GHC developers, in > case they're interested in picking it up. > > -- Dan > > _______________________________________________ > Haskell-Cafe mailing list > Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe