[Haskell-cafe] coherence when overlapping?

[william kim]

Hi All,

One important property of type class dictionary translation is coherence 
which basically says that two typing derivations for the same term at the 
same type in the same environment must be equivalent. This definition is 
established with the assumption of non-overlapping.

In the GHC documentation which describes the extension of overlapping 
instances, an example similar to the following is given.

>class C a where
>   f:a -> a
>instance C Int where
>   f=e1
>instance C a where
>   f=e2
>
>let g x = f x
>in g 1

In this case GHC takes an ¡°incoherent¡± decision by taking the second 
instance as an instantiation of function f even it is executed with an input 
of type Int.

My question is whether the ¡°incoherence¡± behaviour of overlapping 
instances is derived from the definition of coherence in the non-overlapping 
setting?
If yes, how is it applicable to rule out the incoherent behaviour?
If otherwise, what is the definition of coherence with overlapping 
instances?

Thanks.

--william

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