[Haskell-beginners] complex typeclass/constraint question

[Dennis Raddle]

{- I'm writing code to do some combinatorial construction via test-and-evaluate
algorithms. And I want to write a very generic algorithm. The idea is
that the item being constructed has a current state, which is
represented by a data type of typeclass EvalState. And the algorithm
will consider a set of new elements to add to the object being
constructed, represented by a data type of typeclass ElemSet. Here are
the class definitions:

-}
class ElemSet a where
  elemSetNumElements :: a -> Int

class EvalState s where
  isCompleteState :: s -> Bool
  newElemSet :: ElemSet a => s -> a
  integrateElem :: ElemSet a => a -> Int -> s -> s
  -- given an elem set, and an index of the elem to choose , compute a score
  scoreElem :: ElemSet a => a -> Int -> s -> EvalScore
type EvalScore = Float
type RandomnessChooser = [(EvalScore,Int)] -> ErrorRand Int
{- here's my generic search algorithm written using the typeclasses

the problem I'm having relates to the fact that I need to call
'integrateElem' which is a function in typeclass EvalState, and one of
the arguments has the constraint of being of typeclass ElemSet, but I
don't know how to put that constraint in.

The specific error is

"Ambigous type variable 'a' in the constraint: 'ElemSet a' arising
from a use of 'integrateElem'"


-}
search :: (EvalState s) =>
          RandomnessChooser -> s -> ErrorRand ssearch chooser state = do
  if isCompleteState state
    then return state
    else do
      let elemSet = newElemSet state
          n = elemSetNumElements elemSet
          scores = map g [0..n-1]
          g i = (scoreElem elemSet i state,i)
      chosenElemIdx <- chooser scores
      let newState = integrateElem elemSet chosenElemIdx state
      search chooser newState
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