help from the community?

[Andres Loeh]

> >I cannot see how an empty list of tyvars is useful or desirable in
> >practice:
> >    data Foo = Foo (forall . Int)
> >is equivalent to just
> >    data Foo = Foo Int
> >so why bother to permit the former?  It probably indicates some error in
> >the thinking of the programmer, so the compiler should bring it to her
> >attention.

The only reasons that I could see in favor of allowing empty "forall"s
is that it might be easier to automatically generate code. Haskell
seems to be a bit inconsistent in how it treats empty constructs. For
example, empty let and empty where seems to be allowed, but not an
empty case?

> >On the other hand, I can imagine a use for phantom type variables in the
> >quantifier (especially if they occur in multi-parameter predicates, but
> >not in the type).  So I think accepting them with a warning is
> >reasonable.
> >
> >I can also imagine predicates that do not mention locally-quantified
> >variables - the assumption must be that they mention variables bound on
> >the LHS of the datatype decl instead?  e.g. the Show predicate here:
> >
> >    data Foo a b = Foo a b
> >                 | Bar (forall c . (Show b, Relation b c) => (b,c))
> >
> >Hmm, maybe a simpler version of this example would illustrate what you
> >mean by the proposal (first of the three bullets) to allow an empty
> >quantifier list:
> >
> >    data Foo a b = Foo a b
> >                 | Bar (forall . Show b => b)
> >
> >In which case, does this even count as a polymorphic component at all?
> >Is it not rather GADT-like instead?
> >
> >    data Foo a b where
> >      Foo :: a -> b -> Foo a b
> >      Bar :: Show b => b -> Foo a b

Would these two have the same meaning? I have a feeling what the GADT
is, but no idea what the former type means.

> >> Constructor that have polymorphic components cannot appear in the
> >> program without values for their polymorphic fields.
> >
> >I didn't fully understand this requirement.  If Haskell-prime gets
> >rank-2 or rank-n types, then do we need to restrict constructors in this
> >way?

Ok, this really boils down to the question of whether we do rank-2 or
rank-n types. I'm biased, because I actually use rank-n types
frequently, and feel somewhat limited by the rank-2 restrictions.  I
don't know how many people actually do, though. I can understand
Iavor's points that rank-2 might be easier to explain, but at least
GHC's rank-n extension has a very detailed paper explaining it, so I
guess it's one of the better documented extensions.

I very much agree that "nested" patterns for polymorphic components
should be disallowed.

Cheers,
  Andres