[Haskell-cafe] forall vs "=>"

[Bulat Ziganshin]

Hello Daryoush,

Wednesday, May 13, 2009, 6:11:10 AM, you wrote:

> runST ::  (forall s. ST s a) -> a

> evalStateT :: Monad m => StateT s m a -> s -> m a

these are quite opposite things. later means that you should pass some
value of Monad class (well, in this case it's StateT value whose type
is limited to Monad in second argument)

first means that you should pass *polymorphic* value - i.e. value
valid for *any* s

thta's even more exiting is that evalStateT is example of
polymorphic value - it's a function that can process any Monad value


but definitely it will be easier to start with simpler examples. let's
see:

length :: forall a. [a] -> Int

it's, like evalStateT, polymorphic function - it can process lists of
any type. more specific polymorphic functions may have class
constraints:

sum :: (forall a. Num a) => [a] -> a

that may be reduced down to:

sum :: (Num a) => [a] -> a


now let's write a function that may accept *any* function with the
type as length:

rank2_function :: (forall a. [a] -> Int) -> Int -> Int
rank2_function f 1 = f "test"
rank2_function f 2 = f [1..3]



-- 
Best regards,
 Bulat                            mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin at gmail.com