[Haskell-cafe] Hidden types and scope

[Lana Black]

Hello cafe,

While writing some code, I stumbled upon quite an interesting behavior. 
See the code example below.

-------------------------------------------------------------
{-# LANGUAGE ExistentialQuantification #-}
{-# LANGUAGE GeneralizedNewtypeDeriving #-}
{-# LANGUAGE RankNTypes #-}

data Wrapper = forall m. Monad m =>
                Wrapper { runAction :: forall a. m a -> IO a
                        , someAction :: String -> m ()
                        }

newtype MyIO a = MyIO { runIO :: IO a } deriving (Monad)


ex :: Wrapper
ex = Wrapper runIO (\s -> MyIO (putStrLn s))

{- This doesn't work -}
--main :: IO ()
--main = do let Wrapper r a = ex
--          r (a "Hello")

{- This works -}
main :: IO ()
main = case ex of
          Wrapper r a -> r (a "Hello")

-------------------------------------------------------------

The idea is to hide the exact type `m` used in the wrapper, making the 
wrapper somewhat opaque to the user, while exposing some functionality 
and making sure that using `runAction` with the rest of the members of 
Wrapper is type-safe and `m` is always the same type within one instance 
of Wrapper.

The problem that I ran into is that the first version of `main` doesn't 
compile with the following error:
     • Couldn't match expected type ‘p’
                   with actual type ‘forall a. m a -> IO a’
         because type variable ‘m’ would escape its scope
       This (rigid, skolem) type variable is bound by
         a pattern with constructor:
           Wrapper :: forall (m :: * -> *).
                      Monad m =>
                      (forall a. m a -> IO a) -> (String -> m ()) -> 
Wrapper,
         in a pattern binding
         at wildcards.hs:18:15-25
     • In the pattern: Wrapper r a
       In a pattern binding: Wrapper r a = ex
       In the expression:
         do let Wrapper r a = ex
            r (a "Hello")

This is repeated for every member of Wrapper that is matched in a let 
expression. However, if let expression is replaced with case, everything 
builds and works just fine.

Is there a way to make it work with let expressions? That way the code 
is a lot cleaner, especially with RecordWildCards involved.