[Haskell-cafe] Re: Monadic bind with associated types + PHOAS?

[Chung-chieh Shan]

Ryan Ingram <ryani.spam at gmail.com> wrote in article <2f9b2d30811190316o7d24cfccl235fafcf26d17a73 at mail.gmail.com> in gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe:
> I really like the syntax for do-notation.  And I really like how great
> Haskell is as writing embedded languages, a lot of which comes from
> the "programmable semicolon" that monadic bind gives you.

AFAICT, standard Haskell 98 already gives you the ability to express
binding and sharing in PHOAS, except not using do-notation:

    class Symantics repr where
        lam :: (repr a -> repr b) -> repr (a -> b)
        app :: repr (a -> b) -> repr a -> repr b
        add :: repr Int -> repr Int -> repr Int
        int :: Int -> repr Int

    let_ :: Symantics repr => repr a -> (repr a -> repr b) -> repr b
    let_ e body = app (lam body) e

    testSharing :: Symantics repr => repr Int
    testSharing = let_ (add (int 3) (int 4)) (\x -> add x x)

Oleg has already noted that you can nicely express the showing,
optimization (such as partial evaluation), and transformation (such as
to CPS) of embedded code in this framework.  I agree with him and you
that this representation is a promising direction to explore.

All that's missing in standard Haskell 98, then, is the ability to use
do-notation:

    (>>=) = let_

    testSharing = do x <- add (int 3) (int 4)
                     add x x

But -XNoImplicitPrelude in GHC 6.10 is supposed to enable it, no?

-- 
Edit this signature at http://www.digitas.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/ken/sig
2008-11-20 Universal Children's Day              http://unicef.org/
1948-12-10 Universal Declaration of Human Rights http://everyhumanhasrights.org