forall a (Ord a => a-> a) -> Int is an illegal type???

[Ben Rudiak-Gould]

Brian Hulley wrote:
> I'm puzzled why GHC chooses to create illegal types instead  of
> finding the innermost quantification point ie I would think that
> 
>         (Ord a=> a->a) -> Int
> 
> should then "obviously" be shorthand for
> 
>          (forall a. Ord a=> a->a) -> Int
> 
> and surely this could easily be implemented by just prepending "forall a 
> b c" onto any context restricting a b c... (?)

I agree that it's strange to add an implicit quantifier and then complain 
that it's in the wrong place. I suspect Simon would change this behavior if 
you complained about it. My preferred behavior, though, would be to reject 
any type that has a forall-less type class constraint anywhere but at the 
very beginning. I don't think it's a good idea to expand implicit 
quantification. Also, the rule would not be quite as simple as you make it 
out to be, since

     forall a. (forall b. Foo a b => a -> b) -> Int

is a legal type, for example.

-- Ben