Rebindable monads?

Simon Peyton-Jones simonpj at microsoft.com
Mon Nov 28 06:58:51 EST 2005


| Where is there documentation for rebindable syntax for monads with
class

| constraints:

| 

| (>>=) :: (Foo m, Baz a) => m a -> (a -> m b) -> m b

| 

|
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cvs.ghc/9447/match=synt
ax

| 

| The users guide seems to disallow such type signatures:

| 

|
http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/users_guide/syntax-extns.html#re
bindable-syntax

 

I don't think it's in 6.4.   Here's the documentation from the HEAD. 

 

Simon

 

 


7.3.5. Rebindable syntax


GHC allows most kinds of built-in syntax to be rebound by the user, to
facilitate replacing the Prelude with a home-grown version, for example.

You may want to define your own numeric class hierarchy. It completely
defeats that purpose if the literal "1" means "Prelude.fromInteger 1",
which is what the Haskell Report specifies. So the -fno-implicit-prelude
flag causes the following pieces of built-in syntax to refer to whatever
is in scope, not the Prelude versions: 

*         An integer literal 368 means "fromInteger (368::Integer)",
rather than "Prelude.fromInteger (368::Integer)". 

*         Fractional literals are handed in just the same way, except
that the translation is fromRational (3.68::Rational). 

*         The equality test in an overloaded numeric pattern uses
whatever (==) is in scope. 

*         The subtraction operation, and the greater-than-or-equal test,
in n+k patterns use whatever (-) and (>=) are in scope. 

*         Negation (e.g. "- (f x)") means "negate (f x)", both in
numeric patterns, and expressions. 

*         "Do" notation is translated using whatever functions (>>=),
(>>), and fail, are in scope (not the Prelude versions). List
comprehensions, mdo (Section 7.3.3, "The recursive do-notation "
<file:///\\Cam-01-unx\simonpj\builds\HEAD-1\ghc\docs\users_guide\users_g
uide\syntax-extns.html#mdo-notation> ), and parallel array
comprehensions, are unaffected. 

*         Arrow notation (see Section 7.7, "Arrow notation "
<file:///\\Cam-01-unx\simonpj\builds\HEAD-1\ghc\docs\users_guide\users_g
uide\arrow-notation.html> ) uses whatever arr, (>>>), first, app, (|||)
and loop functions are in scope. But unlike the other constructs, the
types of these functions must match the Prelude types very closely.
Details are in flux; if you want to use this, ask! 

In all cases (apart from arrow notation), the static semantics should be
that of the desugared form, even if that is a little unexpected. For
emample, the static semantics of the literal 368 is exactly that of
fromInteger (368::Integer); it's fine for fromInteger to have any of the
types: 

fromInteger :: Integer -> Integer
fromInteger :: forall a. Foo a => Integer -> a
fromInteger :: Num a => a -> Integer
fromInteger :: Integer -> Bool -> Bool

Be warned: this is an experimental facility, with fewer checks than
usual. Use -dcore-lint to typecheck the desugared program. If Core Lint
is happy you should be all right.

 

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