[Haskell-cafe] Cannot update a field in a record with a polymorphic type.

[Tom Ellis]

On Thu, Sep 10, 2020 at 11:45:45AM +0500, Ignat Insarov wrote:
> Thank you all kind folks who responded.
> 
> I think a leap of reasoning has occurred and I would like to ask you
> all to slow down and notice it.
> 
> Record update is special syntax.
> 
> It is not a function. It is not as general as a function. It is not
> perceived nor written as a function. Ain't no lambda in it.
> 
> You may say that it desugars to a function. But as a user of the
> language, I am unconcerned: desugar another way then!
> 
> Surely a function of type `C α ⇒ Y α → Y String` may assign different
> strings to `y`, by consulting methods of `C`. But a record update
> cannot! Neither the value `y₀` nor the type variable α are ever in the
> scope of the update expression.

Why do you say it has anything to do with record update being special?
The same problem occurs with a true function:

    Prelude> data Y a = Y { y :: a }
    Prelude> let defaultY = Y { y = mempty }
    Prelude> let setYc y = y { y = "c" }
    Prelude> :t defaultY
    defaultY :: Monoid a => Y a
    Prelude> :t setYc
    setYc :: Y a -> Y [Char]
    Prelude> :t setYc defaultY

    <interactive>:1:7: error:
        • Ambiguous type variable ‘a0’ arising from a use of ‘defaultY’
          prevents the constraint ‘(Monoid a0)’ from being solved.
          Probable fix: use a type annotation to specify what ‘a0’ should be.
          These potential instances exist:
            instance Monoid a => Monoid (IO a) -- Defined in ‘GHC.Base’
            instance Monoid Ordering -- Defined in ‘GHC.Base’
            instance Semigroup a => Monoid (Maybe a) -- Defined in ‘GHC.Base’
            ...plus 7 others
           (use -fprint-potential-instances to see them all)
        • In the first argument of ‘setYc’, namely ‘defaultY’
          In the expression: setYc defaultY