[Haskell-cafe] Re: Using Collections: ElemsView and KeysView

[Benjamin Franksen]

Jean-Philippe Bernardy wrote:
> foldr on ElemsView is defined as such:
> 
>> foldr f i (ElemsView c) = foldr (f . snd) i c 
> 
> so, for example:
> 
>> getElementList = toList . ElemViews

Ok, thanks, this helps. I had forgot to look at the instances.

> When I designed this code (some years ago), I didn't like the "fold" of
Map to
> have the type:
> 
>> fold :: (a -> b -> b) -> b -> Map k a -> b
> 
> This just doesn't make sense if we see maps as a collection of (key,
value)
> pairs.  (Indeed, toList :: Map k a -> [(k, a)])
> 
> In order to be consistent, but to provide an easy way to migrate to the
new
> collection classes I was designing, I provided the ElemViews/KeyViews to
> "switch" to the former behaviour on a case by case basis.

I understand the motivation. Could you say something about the functions
withElems and withKeys? Their types contain a mysterious type
constructor 'T' that is not documented in the haddock docs. The source file
says 'type T a = a->a' so I guess this is for cases where I want to 'lift'
a function mapping e.g. keys to keys to a fucntion on Maps?

> This also allows for definining optimized versions of foldr, etc. for each
types
> that supports "Views", but this was tedious, so I never did it. GHC "RULE"
> pragma is probably better suited to the purpose anyway.
> 
> As for the lack of documentation, everyone is very welcome to
contribute ;)

I'd love to, but my understanding is still somewhat limited...

Cheers (and thanks)
Ben

P.S. The collections framework is great, but the type errors one sometimes
gets are horrible. When I started to see whether I had understood what you
wrote above I got:

    Couldn't match expected type `c' (a rigid variable)
           against inferred type `Str'
      `c' is bound by the type signature for `macros'
        at MacroSubst.hs:13:24
      Expected type: (Str, c)
      Inferred type: (Str, Str)
    When using functional dependencies to combine
      Foldable (Data.Map.Map k a) (k, a),
        arising from the instance declaration at Defined in Data.Collections
      Foldable (Data.Map.Map Str Str) (Str, c),
        arising from use of `unions' at Gadgets.hs:95:13-30
    When trying to generalise the type inferred for `macros'
      Signature type:     forall c1.
                          (Collection c1 String, Set c1 String) =>
                          Attributes -> c1
      Type to generalise: forall c1.
                          (Collection c1 String, Set c1 String) =>
                          Attributes -> c1