Lambda over types.
anatoli
anatoli@yahoo.com
Thu, 21 Mar 2002 08:35:27 -0800 (PST)
I apologise in case this doesn't make any sense.
ghc -fglasgow-exts -fallow-undecidable-instances allows
constructs which amount to lambda abstraction over types.
I've written a small untyped lambda calculus interpreter
in the Haskell class/instance sublanguage, just to prove
this point. (The terms are Haskell *types*.)
Using this interpreter as a basis, and adapting it as
necessary, I can now write arbitrary "functions" [1] that take
types to types. But of course it's a pain to write them like
that.
Maybe, after all, it does make sense to have a dedicated
lambda-over-types Haskell extension which is convenient
to use?
[1] - I cannot produce an equivalent of
> type Foo a b c = <some-function-over-types> a b c
but I can do an equivalent of this:
> fun :: T1 -> T2 -> T3 -> <some-function-over-types> T1 T2 T3
--
anatoli
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