[Haskell-cafe] Type-level GCD [Instance Chains]

J. Garrett Morris jgbm at acm.org
Wed May 31 14:19:55 UTC 2017


[Apologies for breaking threading...]

On Wed May 31, Anthony Clayden <anthony_clayden at clear.net.nz> wrote:
> Leaving aside the question of backtracking on instance
> non-match,
> would anybody write a type-level GCD like this?

Your question seems to be "would you use the standard recursive
statement of Euclid's algorithm to demonstrate Euclid's algorithm?"
This certainly seemed to be a reasonable idea in 2010.  If your concern
is efficiency, I suggest that not using Peano numerals at all is
probably a more profitable direction.

> (And Subt needs a nasty kludge in case you're trying to
>  subtract the larger: it returns Z.)

What you call a nasty kludge, I call a standard operation on commutative
monoids.  [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monus]

> I think these days (esp with TypeFamilies/Assoc types),

You seem to be discovering that closed instance chains can be
implemented by writing out truth tables.  I discussed this
transformation at length, and suggested that doing might make your code
harder to write and to read, in my Haskell 2015 paper "Variations on
Variants".

Of course, you'll have an easier time of it if you limit yourself to
only considering type-level definitions, and not the corresponding
method definitions.  But doing so rather misses the point of instance
chains.

 /g

-- 
Prosperum ac felix scelus virtus vocatur
 -- Seneca


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