[Haskell-cafe] Use of uninstantiated type class
Yves Parès
limestrael at gmail.com
Sat Mar 5 00:45:33 CET 2011
Hello,
For testing purposes, I am trying to make an overlay to IO which carries a
phantom type to ensure a context.
I define contexts using empty type classes :
class CtxFoo c
class CtxBar c
The overlay :
newtype MyIO c a = MyIO (IO a)
Then I define some methods that run only a specific context :
runFoo :: (CtxFoo c) => MyIO c a -> IO a
runFoo (MyIO x) = x
runBar :: (CtxBar c) => MyIO c a -> IO a
runBar (MyIO x) = x
And then an action that runs in context 'Foo' :
someAction :: (CtxFoo c) => MyIO c ()
someAction = putStrLn "FOO"
Then I run it :
main = runFoo someAction
But obiously, GHC complains that my type 'c' remains uninstantiated :
Ambiguous type variable `c' in the constraint:
(CtxFoo c) arising from a use of `runFoo'
Probable fix: add a type signature that fixes these type variable(s)
In the expression: runFoo someAction
In an equation for `main': main = runFoo someAction
Is there a way to deal with this ?
The interest of using type classes and not empty types to represent the
contexts is that it stays simple, and that I can do that :
someAction2 :: (CtxFoo c, CtxBar c) => MyIO c ()
someAction2 = putStrLn "FOO and BAR"
... a function that can run in both contexts.
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