[Haskell-cafe] Capturing typeclass dictionaries from constructors

[Clinton Mead]

Hi All

I've asked the following question on StackOverflow, but I thought here
might be a good place for it also. Sorry for the crosspost but I'm never
sure what the best place to ask Haskell questions is:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/73244177/capturing-typeclass-dictionaries

I've copied the StackOverflow post below:

---

Below is code that will happily compile (once adding the constraints
 package). Foo1 and Foo2 are two alternate definitions of Foo, which I can
write f1 and f2 sensibly for.

However, I *think* Foo3 is reasonable as well. Yet I don't know how to
write f3. It seems to me that Haskell should store a pointer to the
typeclass dictionary inside the Foo3 constructor, for whatever a is passed
when Foo3 is created, so then I should be able to just call silly. Since
silly just returns String, it doesn't matter if a has been erased by now, I
should be able to happily call the silly pointed to by the dictionary
stored in the constructor Foo3.

Is my reasoning right? And if so, how can I write f3. Alternative, have I
missed something and is there a good reason why I need either Dict or
Proxy here
because without them I haven't got enough information?

{-# LANGUAGE ScopedTypeVariables #-}
import Data.Constraint (Dict(Dict), withDict)import Data.Proxy (Proxy)
data Aliceclass C a where
    silly :: Stringinstance C Alice where
    silly = "Silly Alice"
data Foo1 where
    Foo1 :: Dict (C a) -> Foo1
f1 :: Foo1 -> Stringf1 (Foo1 (dict :: Dict (C a))) = withDict dict $ silly @a
data Foo2 where
    Foo2 :: C a => Proxy a -> Foo2
f2 :: Foo2 -> Stringf2 (Foo2 (_ :: Proxy a)) = silly @a
data Foo3 where
    Foo3 :: C a => Foo3
mkFoo3 :: forall a. C a => Foo3mkFoo3 = Foo3 @a
f3 :: Foo3 -> Stringf3 = undefined
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/attachments/20220805/f3f12dba/attachment.html>