RULES pragma with class constraint

[John Meacham]

On Mon, Mar 20, 2006 at 12:09:41PM -0000, Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:
> Definitely not at present, and I see no easy way to implement it. 
> 
> RULES are implemented by simple matching in Core.  A call to nub will
> have an Eq dictionary, but Core knows nothing of instance
> declarations, and has no clue how to make an Ord dictionary.  But an
> Ord dictionary is what you want on the RHS of the rule.
> 
> The type checker, on the other hand, knows about dictionary
> construction, but nothing about RULES.

I suspected this was the case. Perhaps it could be solved with something
like rule schemes, where a RULES pragma defines a template that is
instantiated as new types that meet certain criteria are introduced. so
a RULE with a class constraint would actually not be a single rule, but
be copied and instantiated every time a new instance is declared at the
new type.

Something like this might also be useful for writing rules that apply to
all built in C numeric types for instance..

not sure how much demand there is for something like this though. I have
a sort of hack in jhc to write rules that apply to any type that maps
directly to a C integral type for basic numeric rules. but it isn't user
extensible in any way. (other than by adding new primitive numeric types
that is)

        John

-- 
John Meacham - ⑆repetae.net⑆john⑈