[Haskell-cafe] A new form of newtype

[Richard O'Keefe]

On Dec 9, 2009, at 1:58 PM, John Millikin wrote:

> What would these types be used for? If your students are complaining
> about having to perform logarithms to store integers, inform them of
> the "Integer" type.

I mentioned one student who couldn't compute log   32 *himself*
                                                  2
to point out that >> people are bad at arithmetic <<.  As my later
example made clear, base 2 logarithms are not the only calculations
one may need to perform.

I would want to use these types practically any time that I
want to choose bounded integer types for my own purposes.

> The existing sized types -- Word/Int [8, 16, 32, 64] -- are useful
> primarily because they match up with "standard" integral data types in
> other languages. They're great for FFI, (un)marshaling via ByteString,
> and occasional low-level code.

Well, no.
If you want to match up with Java's byte, short, int, or long,
then yes, Int8, Int16, Int32, or Int64 are a good match.
If you want to interface with C, you really really ought to be
using
Data.Foreign.{CChar,CSChar,CUChar,CShort,CUShort,CInt,CUInt,CLong,
CULong,CPtrdiff,CSize,CWchar,CSigAomic,CLLong,CULLong,CIntPtr,
CUintPtr,CIntMax,CUintMax,CTime} or Foreign.C.Error.Errno,
or System.Posix.Types.{you can read the list yourself}
and you may well find yourself wishing for others.
_These_ are the '"standard" integral data types' in C,
and they exist precisely because the programmer has
no other portable way of specifying them.

MacOS X gives me library support for integers up to 1024 bits;
if I want to interface to those, what do I do?  Never mind not getting
what I ask for, as things standard I can't even _ask_.

People are now writing EDSLs using Haskell to generate code for
all sorts of interesting things.  What if you want to use Haskell
as a host for an EDSL targeted at a 24-bit DSP?

> In contrast, there is (to my knowledge) no machine with 42-bit
> integers, so there's no point to defining such intermediate types.

There may not be MACHINES with 42-bit integers,
but that doesn't mean there aren't PROBLEMS that need them.
This whole idea of "let the machine dictate the sizes" is
precisely what I'm complaining of.

The Mac OS X library, as I noted above, has
/System/Library/Frameworks/Accelerate.framework/Frameworks/\
vecLib.framework/Headers/vBigNum.h
	vS128	vS256	vS512	vS1024		signed
	vU128	vU256	vU512	vU1024		unsigned
and I'm pretty sure the hardware doesn't do 1024 bit integers
directly.

> In your FileSize example, it would be much easier to simply use:
>
> newtype FileSize = FileSize Integer

sure it would, BUT IT WOULDN'T BE BOUNDED.  By this argument,
the Haskell type 'Int' should not exist; except for using
System.* and Foreign.* interface types we should not be using
bounded integers at all.

> since then your code will cope nicely when everybody upgrades to PB
> disks in a few years. If you need particular bounds, create your own
> instance of Bounded.

Sorry, but creating instances of Bounded is what a compiler is for.
If I don't write it, I won't wrong it.

Put together Data.Int, Data.Word, Foreign.*, System.*, and Haskell
_already_ has oodles of integral newtypes.  All I'm asking for is
a human-oriented way of doing more of the same.  If wanting a
human-oriented way of doing things were unreasonable, we would be
unreasonable to use Haskell, wouldn't we?