[Haskell-cafe] type variable is ambiguous in a non-injective type family

[Henry Laxen]

First, thank you  Li-yao Xia for your clear and helpful response.  I was able
to continue thanks to you.

Thanks for the question Anthony, I look forward to learning something.  I hope
I'll be explain this clearly.

I am writing some games, which can share some code, such as logging in, and
broadcasting messages to players.  I started by writing just one game, with no
consideration for how and what to share.  This let to a gamestate which
contained things like:

newtype GameId = GameId Int

  data Game1 { _game1TimeStarted :: UTCTime,
               _game1PlayerId    :: GameId,
	       ...
	       _game1RandomGen   :: StdGen,
	       _game1Commands    :: [Game1Command] }


the actual state is a more complicated than this, because I split it into a
Static part and a Mutable part that is in a
TVar (Map GameId Game1MutableState)

Next I start writing Game2, which I discover will do the same kind of
broadcasting of messages (Commands) as Game1.  So I would like to use the same
code in Game2 as in Game1 that handles the broadcasting.

I came up with: (this is part of the actual class I am using)

class Game a where
  type Command a         :: *
  type Mutable a         :: *
  type Static  a         :: *
  toGameId               :: a -> GameId
  toMutable              :: a -> IO (Maybe (Mutable a))
  everyone               :: Mutable a -> [Sink]

instance Game Game1State where
  type Command Game1State = Game1Command
  type Mutable Game1State = Game1Mutable
  type Static Game1State  = Game1Static
  toGameId ss         = ss ^. game1Static . game1GameId
  toMutable ss = do
    let
      tVar = ss ^. game1Mutable
      gId = toGameId ss
    gm <- liftIO (readTVarIO tVar)
    return $ M.lookup gId (unGameMap gm)
  everyone = mapMaybe _game1Sink . M.elems . _game1SPMap

similarly, I make Game2State an instance of Game.  Now in the code that
broadcasts commands I have:

sendBroadCasts :: (Show (Command a) , Game a) =>  [BroadCast a] -> a -> IO ()
...

sendOneCommand :: (Show (Command a) , Game a) =>  a -> BroadCastReceiver -> Command a -> IO ()
sendOneCommand ss BroadCastToEveryone command = do
  mbMut <- toMutable ss
  case mbMut of
    Nothing -> return ()
    Just mut -> do
      let sinks = everyone mut
      mapM_ (`sendCommand` command) sinks

but GHC scolds me with:

src/Games/BroadCasts.hs:53:12-23: error: …
    • Couldn't match type ‘Mutable a’ with ‘Mutable a0’
      Expected type: IO (Maybe (Mutable a0))
        Actual type: IO (Maybe (Mutable a))
      NB: ‘Mutable’ is a non-injective type family
      The type variable ‘a0’ is ambiguous
    • In a stmt of a 'do' block: mbMut <- toMutable ss
      In the expression: ...

After incorporating Li-yao Xia's suggestion, the code becomes:

sendOneCommand :: forall a. (Show (Command a) , Game a) =>
----------------- ^^^^^^^^^ this is added
  a -> BroadCastReceiver -> Command a -> IO ()
sendOneCommand _ (BroadCastToSome sinks) command =
  mapM_ (`sendCommand` command) sinks
sendOneCommand ss BroadCastToEveryone command = do
  mbMut <- toMutable ss
  case mbMut of
    Nothing -> return ()
    Just mut -> do
      let sinks = everyone @a mut
-------------------------- ^^ this is added      
      mapM_ (`sendCommand` command) sinks

and GHC is happy.

I hope I have explained this sufficiently clearly.  I look forward to your
insights.

Best wishes,
Henry Laxen

>>>>> "Anthony" == Anthony Clayden <anthony_clayden at clear.net.nz> writes:

    Anthony> Hi Henry, both replies you've received are excellent, I won't expand on them.

    Anthony> I am interested in how you got into such a pickle in the first place:

    Anthony> Why set `AllowAmbiguousTypes`? Did you understand what that means?
----------------------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I read

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49684655/how-dangerous-is-allowambiguoustypes-when-used-with-typeapplications

which seems to indicate that using it is "a perfectly reasonable thing"

    Anthony> Did you think it odd that despite having that set, you get error
    Anthony> `type variable ... is ambiguous`?

    Anthony> There are ways to achieve what you want without
    Anthony> `AllowAmbiguousTypes` nor `TypeApplications`, but that would need
    Anthony> a rather different design. So what lead you into this design?

    Anthony> AntC


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