[Haskell-cafe] Implicit params and typeclasses

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

Grzegorz

A nice example!  I don't think I'd really realised before that a type like
        forall a. (?x::a) => Int
is not ambiguous at all, even though the Int part does not mention the 'a'.  Why not?  Because a call site will give the ?x binding, and that in turn fixes a.

I've fixed GHC (the HEAD) to allow this.  The patch is in an area that I have upheaved recently, so I doubt it'll appear in 6.6.1.  Use the HEAD, or wait for 6.8.

Thanks for suggesting this.  Your example (and name) are immortalised in the regression test suite.

Simon

| -----Original Message-----
| From: haskell-cafe-bounces at haskell.org [mailto:haskell-cafe-bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf Of
| Grzegorz Chrupala
| Sent: 16 November 2006 16:10
| To: Haskell Cafe
| Subject: [Haskell-cafe] Implicit params and typeclasses
|
| Hi all,
| When I try to compile the following in GHC (v 6.6) (with
| -fno-monomorphism-restriction -fimplicit-params)
| class Configuration a where
|     thestring:: a -> String
| foo c = let { ?c = c } in bar
| bar = thestring ?c
| I get:
|     Ambiguous type variable `a' in the constraint:
|       `Configuration a'
|         arising from use of `thestring' at /home/grzegorz/Foo.hs:9:6-17
|     Possible cause: the monomorphism restriction applied to the following:
|       bar :: (?c::a) => String (bound at /home/grzegorz/Foo.hs:9:0)
|       foo :: a -> String (bound at /home/grzegorz/Foo.hs:8:0)
|     Probable fix: give these definition(s) an explicit type signature
|                   or use -fno-monomorphism-restriction
|
| Adding the type signature bar :: (Configuration a,?c :: a) => String
| the compiler says:
|     Ambiguous constraint `Configuration a'
|         At least one of the forall'd type variables mentioned by the constraint
|         must be reachable from the type after the '=>'
|     In the type signature for `bar':
|       bar :: (Configuration a, ?c :: a) => String
|
| Similar code without use of implicit params compiles fine:
| class Configuration a where
|     thestring:: a -> String
| foo c = thestring c
|
| Why do implicit params cause this error and is there a way to make it work?
|
| Thanks,
| --
| Grzegorz
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