Haskell' - class aliases

[Tom Schrijvers]

> Hmm.. okay, here is a rough draft that covers all the important cases I
> think.
>
> assume the following declarations:
>
>> class C1 a where
>>         f1 :: t1
>>         f1 = d1
>
>> class C2 a where
>>         f2 :: t2
>>         f2 = d2
>>         f3 :: t3
>>         f3 = d3
>
>
>
>> class alias S a => A a = (C1 a, C2 a) where
>>         f1 = nd1
>
>
>
> okay, the desugaring is as follows:
>
> there are two different desugaring rules, one for instances, one for the
> alias appearing anywhere other than an instance declaration:
>
>> g :: A a => a -> b
>> g = ...
>
> translates to
>
>> g :: (S a, C1 a, C2 a) => a -> b
>> g = ...
>
> the triplet of (S a, C1 a, C2 a) is completely equivalent to (A a) in
> all ways and all places (other than instance heads), one is just a
> different way to express the other, just like type synonyms. An alias
> just expands to the union of the classes it is an alias for as well as
> its class constraints (superclasses).
>
> now for instance declarations
>
>> instance A a where
>>         f2 = bf2
>
> expands to
>
>> instance (S a) => C1 a where
>>         f1 = nd1
>
>> instance (S a) => C2 a where
>>         f2 = bf2
>>         f3 = d3
>
>
> Note that when declaring an instance of a concrete type, like Int, the
> constraint (S Int) will be trivially satisfied or not at compile time.
> (bf2 is free to use methods of 'S' of course).
>
> this translation is also a bijection, declaring those two instances
> manually as above is indistinguishable from declaring instances via the
> alias in all ways.
>
> Hopefully the generalization to arbitrary numbers of classes is clear...

What about multiple parameters? Can A have more parameters than the Ci? 
Should they be in the same order? Should they overlap?

What about instance contexts, like:

 	instance I a => A a where ...

(What about functional dependencies?)

Tom

--
Tom Schrijvers

Department of Computer Science
K.U. Leuven
Celestijnenlaan 200A
B-3001 Heverlee
Belgium

tel: +32 16 327544
e-mail: tom.schrijvers at cs.kuleuven.be
url: http://www.cs.kuleuven.be/~toms/