[Haskell-cafe]
Dynamics/Read and Existential types (was: Is it possible to read
existential types?)
S. Alexander Jacobson
haskell at alexjacobson.com
Thu Apr 29 15:57:31 EDT 2004
So let me ask this question a different way. Is
it possible to use Read/Show or Typeable with
Existential types.
Given MyClass and MyType as follows:
class (Read a,Show a,Typeable)=>MyClass a where foo::a
type MyType = forall a. MyClass a=> [a]
Is there a way to persist MyType?
My suspicion is that there isn't because Haskell
knows how to say that a string can't be parsed
into a particular type but it does not know how to
say that a string can't be parsed into any type
that is an instance of a particular class. So,
assuming you can't I amn curious to know know if
this is an in-principle problem or just an in-fact
problem.
-Alex-
_________________________________________________________________
S. Alexander Jacobson mailto:me at alexjacobson.com
tel:917-770-6565 http://alexjacobson.com
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