[Haskell-cafe] What are Kind errors and how do you fix them?

[S. Alexander Jacobson]

So if I want to use Monad, I have to have Reverse
only work with Strings and not some data type
that might be a String?

Is there a workaround that would allow me to
preserve flexibility around the target datatype?

Otherwise I'll rename Forward and Reverse to
toString and fromString, but the notion of being
able to guarantee a roundtrip in and out of an
arbitrary datatype seems useful and powerful.

-Alex-


On Tue, 23 Mar 2004, Jon Fairbairn wrote:

> On 2004-03-23 at 16:58EST "S. Alexander Jacobson" wrote:
> > Implementing Reverse from before, I am running
> > into this weird error:
> >
> >   type ReverseType a string = (string ->(string,a))
> >   data Reverse a string = Reverse (ReverseType a string)
> >
> >   instance Monad (Reverse a s) where
> > 	return x = Reverse (\text -> (text,x))
> > 	(Reverse p) >>= k = Reverse p3
> > 		where
> > 		p3 s0 = p2 s1
> > 			where
> > 			(Reverse p2) = k a
> > 			(s1,a)=p s0
> >
> > Produces the error:
> >
> >     Kind error: Expecting kind `* -> *', but `Reverse a s' has kind `*'
> >     When checking kinds in `Monad (Reverse a s)'
> >     In the instance declaration for `Monad (Reverse a s)'
> >
> > I have no clue what this error message means.
>
> Kinds are to types what types are to values. You've declared
> Reverse to have two arguments: it takes a type, then another
> type and returns a type, so its kind is * -> * ->
> *. (Reverse a) has kind * -> * and (Reverse a s) has kind *.
>
> Now a monad is something that takes a type as an argument,
> so has kind * -> *, for example IO has kind * -> * -- you
> expect to see IO Something most places. So (Reverse a) could
> perhaps be a monad, but (Reverse a s) cannot be.
>
>
> --
> Jón Fairbairn                                 Jon.Fairbairn at cl.cam.ac.uk
>
>

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S. Alexander Jacobson                  mailto:me at alexjacobson.com
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