[Haskell-cafe] Restricted type classes

[wren ng thornton]

On 9/6/10 2:35 AM, Ivan Lazar Miljenovic wrote:
> Well, if we consider what this does, pure is equivalent to singleton
> for container types.  The actual definition of pure (or any other
> aspect of Pointed) doesn't require Functor; however there are
> properties for types that are instances of Functor and Pointed.

Right, that's what I was meaning to highlight. If we were doing this in 
Coq, for example, then not having Functor as a superclass of Pointed 
would mean that we'd need a third class PointedFunctor which has both as 
superclasses. In Haskell, since we don't have proofs, PointedFunctor 
wouldn't have any methods and would therefore just be unnecessary 
complication. Though this raises the question of which one makes more 
sense to keep around: Pointed (with no superclass), or PointedFunctor.


> So, from a proof/testing POV having Functor as a superclass is nice;
> from an implementation POV it doesn't seem to be needed.

Though, again, I wonder what the use case would be. Your example of 
singleton collections doesn't seem quite right. I'd expect the singleton 
functions to obey various "spatial" laws (i.e., module-like or vector 
space-like laws). For example,

     union (singleton a) x = insert a x

This isn't exactly like Applicative because 'a' is an element instead of 
a function. And it's not quite like Alternative either, since it only 
requires union to be a semigroup instead of a monoid.

However, I can see some pointed functors that don't have this law, 
either because insert or union don't make sense or because the obvious 
implementations don't fit the pattern. Consider, for instance, the 
ZipList applicative functor which has pure=repeat. It satisfies the 
pointed law just fine, but it's not clear what insert or union should 
mean (interleaving, perhaps? It still wouldn't be an Alternative though).

Perhaps this just means that union/insert should be part of some other 
class. Of course, I'd expect singleton to obey the pointed law as well, 
so that other class would (most likely) be a subclass of pointed 
functors. In any case, it does mean there's something of a mismatch 
between singleton vs return/pure/point/unit.

-- 
Live well,
~wren