[Haskell-beginners] question on typeclasses and applicatives

[Alec Benzer]

Ah, ok, so the reason what I trying didn't work is because I used an
actual type instead of a type variable? I got confused because of the
emphasis you put on * distinct *.

And so, if I want to make Maps applicative functors without dealing
with FlexibleInstances, I'd have to do something like this?

import Control.Applicative
import qualified Data.Map as M
import Data.Monoid

instance (Monoid k, Ord k) => Applicative (M.Map k) where
  pure x = M.fromList [(mempty,x)]
  fs <*> xs = M.fromList [(k1 `mappend` k2,v1 v2) | (k1,v1) <-
M.assocs fs, (k2,v2) <- M.assocs xs]

(sacrificing some functionality, since spaces won't get intercalated
between keys if i use strings)

On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 4:31 PM, Daniel Fischer <daniel.is.fischer at web.de> wrote:
> On Thursday 02 September 2010 22:06:45, Alec Benzer wrote:
>> > Because the language specification imposed that instance declarations
>> > must have the form
>>
>> I guess I meant why does the language specification impose this?
>>
>
> Historical accident, probably. Perhaps it's easier to implement.
>
>> > instance Class (T a1 a2 ... an) where ...
>> >
>> > where T is a type constructor, 0 <= n and a1, a2, ..., an are
>> > *distinct* type variables.
>>
>> I don't understand, what you you mean by distinct? Like how is String
>> not a distinct type variable by itself?
>
> distinct = different, however, String is not a type variable, it's a type
> (more specifically, a type synonym). Type variables start with a lowercase
> letter, things starting with an uppercase letter are type constructors (in
> this context), same as for values
>
> f True = whatever    -- True is a data constructor
> f true = whatever    -- true is a variable, matches anything
>
> So in Haskell98 (and Haskell2010),
>
> instance Class (Either a b) where ...
>
> is a legal instance declaration, the instance head is a type constructor
> (Either) applied to two distinct type variables.
>
> Not legal are
>
> instance Class (Either a a) where ...
>
> (type variables not distinct),
>
> instance Class (Either Char a) where ...
>
> (Char is not a type variable).
>
> It's an inconvenient restriction, so you can turn on FlexibleInstances to
> allow the latter two instances (not both in the same programme, though,
> that would need the dreaded OverlappingInstances).
>
>