[Haskell-cafe] Shadowing record field names

Sat Dec 23 20:16:35 UTC 2017

Please don't worry about derailing—if you had the question, I'm sure a lot
of other people reading did as well.

An "orphan instance" is a typeclass instance defined in a module that
doesn't also define the class or the type. In my example, it's an instance
of the IsLabel class (from GHC.OverloadedLabels) for the function type (a
-> b). This is a problem because Haskell typeclass instances are not
module—a type can only have one instance of a given class *in the entire
program*. This means that if two libraries defined the instance I gave,
*you would not be able to use them together in the same project*. This is
why you should absolutely not define this instance in a library.

An alternative design here would be to define a new type for lenses that
does not overlap with (a -> b). Something like ReifiedLens, defined
specifically to have this instance:

newtype FieldLens s t a b = FieldLens (Lens s t a b)

instance (...) => IsLabel (FieldLens s t a b) where
  ...

Unfortunately, this would make FieldLens incompatible with normal lenses,
leading to a bit of boilerplate each time you had to call a field.

The other alternative is to use RebindableSyntax which lets you substitute
your own IsLabel class in place of the one defined in GHC.OverloadedLabels.
This is probably the neatest solution, but RebindableSyntax feels like a
really heavyweight extension to use. That said, my guess is that we'll use
it in our internal code at work if there is ever a conflict with the
current IsLabel instance we're using. The current experience with records
is too nice to pass up without a fight :).

The #bar syntax uses the OverloadedLabels extension. This adds the IsLabel
class and desugars #bar into fromLabel @"bar"

The @ is type application, so the "bar" in fromLabel @"bar" is a type-level
symbol, not a normal string. This is how we get the name of the field into
the typeclass instance.

On Sat, Dec 23, 2017 at 12:01 PM, Siddharth Bhat <siddu.druid at gmail.com>
wrote:

> At the risk of derailing the thread, what exactly does it mean to be an
> "orphan instance"? And where does "#bar" come from, I've never seen that
> syntax before :) I followed the exposition up to that point, if it helps.
>
> Thanks,
> Siddharth
>
> On Sun 24 Dec, 2017, 01:23 Tikhon Jelvis, <tikhon at jelv.is> wrote:
>
>> This is a real pain point with records in Haskell.
>>
>> The fundamental problem is that unlike most languages with records or
>> object, field names are treated as normal identifiers in Haskell. Other
>> languages make fields special—you can only use them with the . operator
>> or in other select contexts. The advantage is that you can do things like
>> `a.author == author`; the disadvantage is that fields become a second-class
>> citizen.
>>
>> At work, we have a solution that's really nice to use built on top of
>> DuplicateRecordFields and OverloadedLabels. Our approach follows the ideas
>> in the OverloadedRecordFields proposal but with a lens flavor—very
>> similar to the overloaded-records[1] package. (We don't use that package
>> directly because I wrote our own version before I knew about it and I like
>> the ergonomics of our internal version a bit more.)
>>
>> We have a couple of typeclasses for reading and writing fields:
>>
>> class HasField (field :: Symbol) s a | s -> a where
>>   getField :: s -> a
>>
>> class UpdatesField (field :: Symbol) s t b | name t -> b, name s b -> t
>> where
>>   updateField :: s -> b -> t
>>
>> A record field can be both read and updated:
>>
>> type Field field s t a b = (HasField field s a, UpdatesField field name s
>> t b)
>>
>> field :: forall (name :: Symbol) s t a b. Field name s t a b => Lens s t
>> a b
>> field = lens (getField @name) (updateField @name)
>>
>> Then we have some Template Haskell for generating instances of these
>> classes. Here's a contrived example:
>>
>> data Foo a = Foo { bar :: [a] }
>>
>> record ''Foo
>>
>> which generates:
>>
>> instance HasField "bar" (Foo a) a where
>>   getField = bar
>>
>> instance UpdatesField "bar" (Foo a) (Foo b) b where
>>   updateField foo bar' = foo { bar = bar' }
>>
>> Given these, we can already write code looking up fields as lenses:
>>
>> > Foo [1,2,3] ^. field @"bar"
>> [1,2,3]
>>
>> Now fields aren't normal identifiers any more, the names can be shared
>> over different records (with DuplicateRecordFields) and you can write
>> functions polymorphic over any record with a given field.
>>
>> The names and details here are a bit different, but I believe this is
>> otherwise exactly what overloaded-records gives you. You could also replace
>> the TH to generate instances with generics in the style of the generic-lens
>> library.
>>
>> However, the field @"bar" is painfully verbose. We solve this using
>> OverloadedLabels and a somewhat shady orphan instance for IsLabel:
>>
>> instance (Functor f, Field name s t a b, a' ~ (a -> f b), b' ~ (s -> f
>> t)) => IsLabel name (a' -> b') where
>>   fromLabel = field @name
>>
>> The details are a bit fiddly, but this is what we need to make type
>> inference work correctly. This lets us replace field @"name" with #name:
>>
>> > Foo [1,2,3] ^. #bar
>> [1,2,3]
>> > Foo [1,2,3] & #bar . each %~ show
>> Foo { bar = ["1","2","3"] }
>>
>> The downside is that this is an orphan instance for IsLabel for *all
>> functions*. You would not want to use this in a library but it's fine in an
>> executable as long as you don't mind potentially needing to reword things
>> if a similar IsLabel instance is added to base. (A risk I'm willing to take
>> for better syntax :))
>>
>> Apart from that (somewhat serious) downside, the final result is pretty
>> much perfect: fields are first-class citizens (as lenses) and are not in
>> the same scope as identifiers. We've been using this extensively throughout
>> our whole project and it's been perfect—perhaps surprisingly, we haven't
>> run into any issues with type inference or type error messages (beyond what
>> you normally get with lens).
>>
>> With this addition, Haskell records went from being a real blemish on the
>> language to being the best I've ever used. The orphan instance is a
>> definite red flag and you should absolutely *not* have that instance in a
>> library, but if you're working on a standalone executable or some extensive
>> internal code, I think it's absolutely worth it.
>>
>> [1]: https://hackage.haskell.org/package/overloaded-records
>>
>> [2]: https://hackage.haskell.org/package/generic-lens
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Dec 23, 2017 at 6:41 AM, Li-yao Xia <lysxia at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I don't think "authorL" hurts readability. It just seems the logical
>>> choice if "author" is already taken.
>>>
>>> Have you seen generic-lens? The lens for the "author" field is  (field
>>> @"author") so there is some added noise compared to "authorL", but it can
>>> be used as a TH-free alternative to makeClassy.
>>>
>>> type Field name a = forall s. HasField name s s a a => Lens s s a a
>>>
>>> authorL :: Field "author" Author
>>> authorL = field @"author"
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Li-yao
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/23/2017 08:36 AM, ☂Josh Chia (謝任中) wrote:
>>>
>>>> Quite often, I need to use record types like this:
>>>>
>>>> data Whole1 = Whole1 { part :: Part, ... }
>>>> data Whole2 = Whole2 { part :: Part, ... }
>>>>
>>>> Where Whole1 & Whole2 are types of things that have a Part and some
>>>> other things. E.g. a Book has an Author, a Title, etc and so does an
>>>> Article.
>>>>
>>>> The problem is that I'm not actually allowed to use the same name
>>>> (author/part) in two different record types. Some people use lens to solve
>>>> this. You can have a lens called 'author' for dealing with the Author in
>>>> both Book and Article (e.g. using makeClassy).
>>>>
>>>> That's fine, but there's yet another problem. Let's say I have a
>>>> function that takes an Author and a [Library] and returns all the Libraries
>>>> that have Books or Articles matching the Author. So:
>>>>
>>>> findAuthorLibraries :: Author -> [Library] -> [Library]
>>>> findAuthorLibraries author libraries = ...
>>>>
>>>> But I already have a lens called 'author' and ghc will complain about
>>>> shadowing. So, to avoid shadowing, should I use 'theAuthor' instead of
>>>> 'author' for the function argument? Or, should I name the lens
>>>> 'authorLens', 'authorL' or 'lAuthor' instead of 'author'? Prefixing with
>>>> 'the' is quite unreadable because whether or not an argument has that
>>>> prefix depends on whether there's a lens with a conflicting name so it adds
>>>> noise to the code. Adding a 'Lens' prefix to the 'author' lens also seems
>>>> quite an overbearing eyesore because for consistency I would have to use
>>>> the prefix for all my field-accessing lenses.
>>>>
>>>> Maybe I should use Lens.Control.TH.makeClassy and then define:
>>>>
>>>> findAuthorLibraries :: HasAuthor a => a -> [Library] -> [Library]
>>>> findAuthorLibraries hasAuthor libraries = ...
>>>>
>>>> But that may be making my function more complicated and general than I
>>>> want, affecting readability, simplicity, compilation time and maybe even
>>>> performance.
>>>>
>>>> In summary, I find that there are ways around the problem but they
>>>> really affect readability.
>>>>
>>>> I could also disable the warning about shadowing but that seems pretty
>>>> dangerous. It may be OK to disable the warning for the specific cases where
>>>> a function argument shadows something from the topmost scope, but GHC does
>>>> not allow such selective disabling of that warning.
>>>>
>>>> In a code base that deals mainly with concrete business logic, this
>>>> problem probably crops up more than in a code base that deals mainly with
>>>> more abstract things.
>>>>
>>>> What do people do to address this problem? Any recommendations or best
>>>> practices?
>>>>
>>>> Josh
>>>>
>>>>
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>>
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>
> --
> Sending this from my phone, please excuse any typos!
>
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