[Haskell-cafe] flexible contexts problem

[Sean McLaughlin]

Ah, I see.  Thanks very much.  For some reason I figured the second type would
be resolved to Int, but now I see that is totally wrong.

Best,

Sean
On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 8:34 PM, Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH <
allbery at ece.cmu.edu> wrote:

> On Sep 12, 2009, at 20:17 , Sean McLaughlin wrote:
>
> However, if you replace the function f with
>
> f :: (MonadState s m, Has Int s) => m Int
> f = do x <- project
>           y <- project
>           return x
>
> then it fails with the error
>
>     Could not deduce (Has α s)
>       from the context (MonadState s m, Has Int s)
>       arising from a use of `project'
>                    at /Users/sean/uploads/Weird.hs:16:12-18
>     Possible fix:
>       add (Has α s) to the context of the type signature for `f'
>     In a stmt of a 'do' expression: y <- project
>     In the expression:
>         do x <- project
>            y <- project
>            return x
>     In the definition of `f':
>         f = do x <- project
>                y <- project
>                return x
>
>
> I think what this is really telling you is that there's no way for ghc to
> tell what type y has.  x is fine because it's in the result (hence fixed by
> the type (m Int)), but y is just "there" and all ghc knows is that it has
> (Has α s) and (MonadState s m, Has Int s) but no way to get from one to the
> other (more specifically:  it has no clue what α might be).
>
> Note that project is explicitly polymorphic, so the fact that you used it
> to get an (Int) does not in any sense guarantee that the subsequent use
> *also* produces an Int.  If you want this, you'll have to constrain the call
> somehow.
>
> --
> brandon s. allbery [solaris,freebsd,perl,pugs,haskell] allbery at kf8nh.com
> system administrator [openafs,heimdal,too many hats] allbery at ece.cmu.edu
> electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon university    KF8NH
>
>
>
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