Liberalising IncoherentInstances
AntC
anthony_clayden at clear.net.nz
Tue Jul 30 12:18:48 CEST 2013
> Axel Simon <Axel.Simon <at> in.tum.de> writes:
> ...
>
> In recent years I acquired the view that
> type inferences should have some sort of semantic completeness property
> ...
If you want 'semantic completeness', don't use IncoherentInstances.
(As several have said, it's not a popular extension;
more of a 'necessary evil' to use with caution.
That's why it's a good suggestion to limit it's 'reach'
to particular instances.)
The price to pay for avoiding IncoherentInstances might be:
- adding extra instances to avoid partial overlap
- adding type annotations
- 'helper' classes to resolve type-ambivalent instances
(see Oleg's work for examples of these)
- fancy uses of FunDeps
- ultimately, programs that fail to compile
> ... With "semantic completeness" I mean "the best possible type
> that that can be expressed by the type language". ...
If there is a (unique) 'best possible type',
then you don't need IncoherentInstances, IMO.
AntC
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