[Haskell-cafe] Should there be a haskell template for inclusion polymorphism in Haskell?

[Miao ZhiCheng]

Hi Olaf!

Sorry for a bit of delay, I finally managed to digest your inputs.

Your existential type AnyNum is the union of all number types, but even
> set-theoretically there is no way of extending individual operations on
> many sets to a single operation on the union of all sets, even when the
> operations commute with subset inclusion. That ony works if the union
> is directed (see attached), that is, if for every two sets A and B
> there is a third set C in the union of which both other sets are a
> subset.
>
So in order to implement
>     AnyNum (5 :: Rational) + AnyNum (NaN :: Double)
> you first have to find a single other Num type that Rational and Double
> can be cast into, then perform the (+) there.
>

Thank you for the example! I managed to play around with it, and added a
bit more general examples:

```
instance Castable Integer Double where
  cast1 = fromInteger
instance Castable Rational Double where
  cast1 = fromRational
instance Castable Double Double where
  cast1 = id
instance (Castable a Double, Castable b Double) => Directed Num a b Double
where
    castUnion _ (a, b) = (cast1 a, cast1 b)
genericPlus ::
  forall a b c.
  (Num a, Num b, Num c, Directed Num a b c) =>
  a -> b -> c
genericPlus = castOp (Proxy :: Proxy Num) (+)

main = do
  print $ show $ genericPlus (2 :: Integer) (5 :: Integer)
  print $ show $ genericPlus (1/3 :: Rational) (5 :: Integer)
  print $ show $ genericPlus (1/3 :: Rational) (2/3 :: Rational)
  print $ show $ genericPlus (4 :: Integer) (2/3 :: Rational)
```

That's interesting, it also makes me think how the C language style of
"implicit casting" is working under the hood.


>
> What the libraries like generics-sop, attenuation and to some extent
> the Prelude do is to construct a hierarchy either via multi-parameter
> type classes
>      A `IsSubtypeOf` B
> or constrained classes like
>      Num a => Fractional a
> That may culminate in a most inclusive type or type class, providing
> all the operations of its ancestors. Notice the reversal of
> inclusions:
>
> Integer `IsSubtypeOf` Rational
> fromInteger :: Integer -> Rational
> instance Num Integer
> instance Fractional Rational
> Rational `IsSubclassOf` Num
>
> Instead of the union of all types under consideration, maybe the
> intersection is useful to you. Attached is a module that implements the
> initial object of a class (which I think in the case of Num is
> isomorphic to Integer), that is a type that can do everything every
> other Num type can do, but nothing more. AnyNum is the terminal object
> of Num.
>
> -- The initial object in the Num class
> newtype FreeNum = FreeNum {
>     runNum :: forall r.
>         (Integer -> r) -> -- fromInteger
>         (r -> r -> r) ->  -- (+)
>         (r -> r -> r) ->  -- (*)
>         (r -> r) ->       -- negate
>         (r -> r) ->       -- abs
>         (r -> r) ->       -- signum
>         r
>     }
>
> On this, we can implement numeric operations without casting.
>

That's the next level... I don't think I can manage to figure out how to
define "operations in NumSig num" or even a `freeDouble` today...

Although it already deviates from my original inquiry, which was about
run-time polymorhpism and have some sort of OO-style INum class in Haskell.
As later I figured out, a "+=" operator would make more sense for
"objects", and type checkings could be run-time using Typeable. But I
learned something already, fun exercise so far though!

Best regards,
Miao



> Olaf
>
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