[Haskell-cafe] Hunting for ghci manual input vs. file input differences again

[MarLinn]

Hi,

I've been working on a kind of constrained version of Data.Dynamic:

	data Dynamic (c :: * -> Constraint) where
	    Dynamic :: (Typeable a, c a) => a -> Dynamic c

The idea is that Data.Dynamic gives up all compile time type 
information. In this variant I can at least keep a bit of the 
information around that I have. (In fact I can even "lift" a type into a 
constraint, thereby keeping /all/ information.) Most of my functions are 
nailed down, including mappings and traversals. But one group of 
functions eludes me: functions to change only the constraint, while 
keeping the value. Here is one of my goal types:

	castDynamic :: ( Typeable a, c a, d a ) => Dynamic c -> Dynamic d

I'm pretty sure I'll have to sprinkle in a Proxy a, but so be it. I've 
thrown all typing tricks at this function that I know of, from 
unsafeCoerce over case-of instead of pattern matching, to 
ScopedTypeVariables. But I couldn't convince ghci to accept my code. So 
I tried something simpler.

	castDynamic' :: (Typeable a, c a) => Dynamic Show -> Maybe (Dynamic c)

Here's where it gets funny: I can implement this function in ghci 
interactively just fine.

	>>> :t \(d :: Dynamic Show) -> case d of Dynamic a -> Dynamic <$> cast a
	\(d :: Dynamic Show) -> case d of Dynamic a -> Dynamic <$> cast a
	  :: (Typeable a, c a) => Dynamic Show -> Maybe (Dynamic c)

But when I enter the exact same code in a file and load it, ghci balks 
at me because a is too ambiguous. Again, I've tried if it's the 
monomorphism restriction, or if I need to sprinkle in more (scoped) 
signatures or explicit forall's etc… nothing helped.

What is the difference here? Am I missing an extension? Am I doing 
something I shouldn't and the interactive mode is just doing me a favor? 
There was a discussion on this list less than a month ago where it was 
mentioned that ghci handles polymorphic types differently depending on 
the source of the code. Is there some documentation on these 
differences? Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers,
MarLinn

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