[Haskell-cafe] DSLs with {in,}equalities

[Alberto G. Corona]

even at the level of expressions you can be sure that inequalities hold. So
you can create an instance of Ord. for example:
(Sum x z) <  y | x== y && z>0 = True
                      | ....

here x and y can be expressions and == can have its own rules

with this you can compute symbolically, because you don´t need to reduce the
expression to a numerical value. It´s a matter of finding rules.

2009/3/13 Alberto G. Corona <agocorona at gmail.com>

> >(<) :: (Ord a) => a -> a -> Bool
>
> what´s the problem?
>
> make your Expr an instance of Ord.
>
> By the way
>
> > instance Num Expr where
> > fromInterger = Const
> > (+) = Plus
> > (*) = Times
>
> does not work. you have not defined (+) and (*) for Const Integer.
>
> (+) (Const a) (Const b)= Const (a+b)
>
> With this you have an evaluator.
>
> In the same way:
>
> (Const a) < (Const b) = Const (a < b)
>
>
>
>
> 2009/3/12 Adam Vogt <vogt.adam at gmail.com>
>
> This seems to be in ghc for those reasons:
>> http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Quasiquotation
>>
>> * On Monday, March 02 2009, Andrew Hunter wrote:
>>
>> >Several times now I've had to define an EDSL for working with
>> >(vaguely) numeric expressions.  For stuff like 2*X+Y, this is easy,
>> >looking pretty much like:
>> >
>> >> data Expr = Const Integer | Plus Expr Expr | Times Expr Expr
>> >>
>> >> instance Num Expr where
>> >> fromInterger = Const
>> >> (+) = Plus
>> >> (*) = Times
>> >
>> >&c.  This lets me get a perfectly nice AST, which is what I want.
>> >When I want to be able to express and work with inequalities and
>> >equalities, this breaks.  Suppose I want to write 2*X + Y < 3.  I
>> >either have to:
>> >
>> >a) Hide Prelude.(<) and define a simple < that builds the AST term I
>> want.
>> >b) Come up with a new symbol for it that doesn't look totally awful.
>> >
>> >Neither of these work decently well.  Hiding Eq and Ord operators,
>> >which is what I effectively have to do for a), is pretty much a
>> >nonstarter--we'll have to use them too much for that to be practical.
>> >
>> >On the other hand, b) works...but is about as ugly as it gets.  We
>> >have lots and lots of symbols that are already taken for important
>> >purposes that are syntactically "near" <,<=,==, and the like: << and
>> >>> and >>= for monads, >>> for arrows, etc.  There...are not good
>> >choices that I know of for the symbols that don't defeat the purpose
>> >of making a nice clean EDSL for expressions; I might as well use 3*X +
>> >Y `lessthan` 3, which is just not cool.
>> >
>> >Does anyone know of a good solution, here?  Are there good
>> >substitutions for all the six operators that are important
>> >(<,>,>=,<=,==,/=), that are close enough to be pretty-looking but not
>> >used for other important modules?
>> >
>> >Better yet, though a little harder, is there a nice type trick I'm not
>> >thinking of?  This works for Num methods but not for Ord methods
>> >because:
>> >
>> >(+) :: (Num a) => a -> a -> a
>> >(<) :: (Ord a) => a -> a -> Bool
>> >
>> >i.e. the return type of comparisons is totally fixed.  I don't suppose
>> >there's a good way to...well, I don't know what the *right* answer is,
>> >but maybe define a new typeclass with a more flexible type for < that
>> >lets both standard types return Bool and my expressions return Expr?
>> >Any good solution would be appreciated.
>> >
>> >Thanks,
>> >AHH
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