[Haskell-cafe] TypeApplications and Proxy

[Richard Eisenberg]

I would say that TypeApplications is stable enough, and that the ordering of type variables is reliable enough.

But, sadly, we can't quite get rid of Proxy yet. Here's a very contrived example:

type family F a
hr :: (forall a. F a -> ()) -> ()
hr _ = ()

x = hr (\ _ -> ())

In the body of the lambda there, it is impossible to bind the type variable `a` with any Haskell construct. The workaround is to use Proxy in the type of hr. I don't know another way to do it.

So I'm all for removing other uses of Proxy, but I don't think we should quite drop it from base, yet.

Proposal #155 (https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/155) is in this area, but it's not yet implemented.

Richard

> On Sep 14, 2020, at 3:34 PM, Johannes Waldmann <johannes.waldmann at htwk-leipzig.de> wrote:
> 
> 
>> TypeApplication depends on the
>> order in which type variables are introduced. 
> 
> https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/latest/docs/html/users_guide/glasgow_exts.html#ordering-of-specified-variables
> 
> The easy fix is to declare all type variables.
> Then the first clause of 9.19.2 is enough?
> 
> - J.
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