[Haskell-cafe] closed classes [was: Re: exceptions vs. Either]

oleg at pobox.com oleg at pobox.com
Tue Aug 10 01:39:15 EDT 2004


Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:

>         kind HNat = HZero | HSucc HNat
>
>         class HNatC (a::HNat)
>
>         instance HNatC HZero
>         instance HNatC n => HNatC (HSucc n)
>
> There is no way to construct a value of type HZero, or (HSucc HZero);
> these are simply phantom types. ... A merit of declaring a kind
> is that the kind is closed -- the only types of kind HNat are HZero,
> HSucc HZero, and so on. So the class doesn't need to be closed; no one
> can add new instances to HNatC because they don't have any more types of
> kind HNat.

With the flag -fallow-overlapping-instances, could I still add an instance
	instance HNatC n => HNatC (HSucc (HSucc n))
or
	instance HNatC (HSucc HZero)
??


If I may I'd like to second the proposal for closed classes. In some
sense, we already have them -- well, semi-closed. Functional
dependencies is the way to close the world somewhat. If we have a
class
	class Foo x y | x -> y
	instance Foo Int Bool
we are positive there may not be any instance 'Foo Int <anything>'
ever again, open world and -fallow-overlapping-instances
notwithstanding. In fact, it is because we are so positive about that
fact that we may conclude that "Foo Int x" implies x = Bool. At least
in the case of functional dependencies, the way to close the world gives
us type improvement rules. One might wonder if there are other ways
to (semi-)close the world with similar nice properties.



More information about the Haskell-Cafe mailing list