[Haskell-cafe] Tips for converting Prolog to typeclasses?

[Robert Dockins]

On Wednesday 31 May 2006 08:22 pm, Greg Buchholz wrote:
>     Lately, in my quest to get a better understanding of the typeclass
> system, I've been writing my typeclass instance declarations in Prolog
> first, then when I've debugged them, I port them over back over to
> Haskell.  The porting process involves a lot trial and error on my part
> trying to decide when to use functional dependencies and which compiler
> extension to enable ( -fallow-undecidable-instances,
> -fallow-overlapping-instances, etc.).  Which might be okay, but I still
> can produce things that won't compile, and I don't necessarily know if
> I'm making a fundamental mistake in a program, or if there's something
> trivial that I'm not doing quite right.
>
>     For example, there was a question on haskell-cafe last week about
> creating an "apply" function.  My first solution (
> http://www.haskell.org//pipermail/haskell-cafe/2006-May/015905.html )
> was to use type classes and nested tuples for the collection of
> arguments.  This works fine.  But then I wanted to try to get closer to
> what the original poster wanted, namely to use regular homogenous lists
> to store the arguments.  So I thought I could reuse the class definition
> and just provide new instances for a list type, instead of the nested
> tuple type.  Here's the class definition...
>
> > class Apply a b c | a b -> c where
> >     apply :: a -> b -> c
>
> ...So I wrote the following Prolog snippets which seemed like they might
> properly describe the situation I was looking for...
>
> :- op(1000,xfy,=>).  % use => instead of -> for arrow type
>
> app(A=>B,[A],C) :- app(B,[A],C).
> app(C,[A],C).
>
> ...which I translated into the following Haskell instances...
>
> > instance Apply b [a] c => Apply (a->b) [a] c where
> >     apply f [] = error "Not enough arguments"
> >     apply f (x:xs) = apply (f x) xs
> > instance Apply c [a] c where
> >     apply f _ = f


To make this work, you're going to have to convince the compiler to accept 
"overlapping instances" and then make sure they don't overlap :) In the 
second instance, what you really want to say is "instance c [a] c, only where 
c is not an application of (->)".  As I recall, there is a way to express 
such type equality/unequality using typeclasses, but I don't remember how to 
do it offhand.


A quick google turns up this page, which appears to address most of the 
questions at hand:

http://okmij.org/ftp/Haskell/types.html


> ...and here's a test program...
>
> > g :: Int -> Int -> Int -> Int -> Int
> > g w x y z = w*x + y*z
> >
> > main = do print $ apply g [1..]
>
> ...but I haven't been able to get GHC to accept this yet.  So I'm
> wondering if there's an easy route to learning this stuff.  Some sort of
> comprehensive tutorial out there which I should be reading that
> describes what should be possible with Haskell's typeclasses plus GHC
> extenstions, and when and where to enable these extentions.  (Bonus
> points awarded if it explains things in terms of Prolog).  Or is this
> just one of those things that requires reading lots of papers on each
> extentsion and possibly the source code of the implementation?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Greg Buchholz
>
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-- 
Rob Dockins

Talk softly and drive a Sherman tank.
Laugh hard, it's a long way to the bank.
       -- TMBG