[Haskell-cafe] Efficient or predictable Ord for Typeable

George Russell ger at informatik.uni-bremen.de
Tue Nov 30 04:54:42 EST 2004


Simon PJ wrote (snipped):
 > This unfortunate observabilty of an ordering (or hash value) that is
 > needed only for efficient finite maps, is very annoying.  I wish I knew
 > a way round it.  As it is we can pick
 > 	a) expose Ord/Hash, but have unpredictable results
 > 	b) not have Ord/Hash, but have inefficient maps

In this case there is a simple solution.  Simply define

    newtype FastUnpredictableInstances a = FastUnpredictableInstances a

and define the fast Ord and Hash only for FastUnpredictableInstances.
People who manage to type all that then have no grounds to grumble
if they get bitten.  For something as basic as implementing execution
contexts, FastUnpredictableInstances is acceptable.


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