question about GHC API on GHC plugin

Andrew Farmer afarmer at ittc.ku.edu
Fri Aug 21 00:55:54 UTC 2015


The `buildDictionary` function takes a Var with a dictionary type, and
builds the expression which implements that dictionary.

For instance, you might create a new Var:

x :: Num Float

and pass that to buildDictionary. It will return:

(x, [NonRec x $fNumFloat])

which you could blindly turn into:

let x = $fNumFloat
in x

or you could do what buildDictionaryT (a bit further down in the same
module), and spot that case and just return $fNumFloat directly. (The
list can have more than one element in the case that dictionaries are
built in terms of other dictionaries.)

Thus, you've built a dictionary expression of type Num Float.

As I understand it, you want to pass something 'log' and get back the
dictionary argument. You'll need to choose a type (like Float), but
once that is done, it should be easy to use buildDictionary to build
the dictionary arguments... just take apart the type of 'log @ Float',
make a new Var with the argument type, build a dictionary expression,
and apply it.

On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 5:05 PM, Mike Izbicki <mike at izbicki.me> wrote:
> I'm pretty sure the `buildDictionary` function doesn't do what I need.
> AFAICT, you pass it a `Var` which contains a dictionary, and it tells
> you what is in that dictionary.  What I need is a function with type
> `Var -> Var` where the first `Var` contains a function, and the output
> `Var` is the dictionary.
>
> For example, given the expression:
>
>     log (a1+a2)
>
> In core, this might look like:
>
>     log @ Float $fFloatingFloat (+ @ Float $fNumFloat a1 a2)
>
> I want to mechanically construct the core code above.  When doing so,
> each function within a type class has an extra argument, which is the
> dictionary for that type class.  `log` no longer takes one parameter;
> in core, it takes two.  I'm having trouble figuring out how to get the
> appropriate dictionary to pass as the "dictionary parameter" to these
> functions.
>
> On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 4:21 PM, Andrew Farmer <afarmer at ittc.ku.edu> wrote:
>> HERMIT has some code for building dictionaries for a given predicate
>> type (by invoking the typechecker functions that do this):
>>
>> https://github.com/ku-fpg/hermit/blob/master/src/HERMIT/Dictionary/GHC.hs#L223
>>
>> The functions to run TcM computations inside CoreM are here:
>>
>> https://github.com/ku-fpg/hermit/blob/master/src/HERMIT/Monad.hs#L242
>> and
>> https://github.com/ku-fpg/hermit/blob/master/src/HERMIT/GHC/Typechecker.hs#L47
>>
>> Perhaps that will help get you started?
>>
>> I would like to push these interfaces back into the GHC API at some
>> point, but just haven't done it yet.
>>
>> HTH
>> Andrew
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 4:12 PM, Mike Izbicki <mike at izbicki.me> wrote:
>>> I'm not sure how either of those two functions can help me.  The
>>> problem is that given an operator (e.g. `+`), I don't know the name of
>>> the dictionary that needs to be passed in as the first argument to the
>>> operator.  I could probably hard code these names, but then the plugin
>>> wouldn't be able to work with alternative preludes.
>>>
>>> On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 11:20 PM, Edward Z. Yang <ezyang at mit.edu> wrote:
>>>> Hello Mike,
>>>>
>>>> Give importDecl from LoadIface a try, or maybe tcLookupGlobal if
>>>> you're in TcM.
>>>>
>>>> Edward
>>>>
>>>> Excerpts from Mike Izbicki's message of 2015-08-07 15:40:30 -0700:
>>>>> I'm trying to write a GHC plugin.  The purpose of the plugin is to
>>>>> provide Haskell bindings to Herbie. Herbie
>>>>> (https://github.com/uwplse/herbie) is a program that takes a
>>>>> mathematical statement as input, and gives you a numerically stable
>>>>> formula to compute it as output.  The plugin is supposed to automate
>>>>> this process for Haskell programs.
>>>>>
>>>>> I can convert the core expressions into a format for Herbie just fine.
>>>>> Where I'm having trouble is converting the output from Herbie back
>>>>> into core.  Given a string that represents a numeric operator (e.g.
>>>>> "log" or "+"), I can get that converted into a Name that matches the
>>>>> Name of the version of that operator in scope at the location.  But in
>>>>> order to create an Expr, I need to convert the Name into a Var.  All
>>>>> the functions that I can find for this (e.g. mkGlobalVar) also require
>>>>> the type of the variable.  But I can't find a way to figure out the
>>>>> Type given a Name.  How can I do this?
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>


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