Type classes confusion

[andrew cooke]

Ah.  I just need to drop the context from the data type declaration.

Sorry,
Andrew

andrew cooke said:
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to use type classes and suspect I've got confused somewhere
> down the line, because I've got to an error message that I don't
> understand and can't remove.
>
> I have a class that works like a hash table, mapping from String to some
> type.  I have two instances, one that is case insensitive for keys.  I
> want to hide these instances from the rest of the code, which should only
> use the class.  This class is called Dictionary.
>
> In addition, for Dictionaries that map Strings to Strings, I have some
> functions which do substitutions on Strings using their own contents.
> Possibly the first source of problems is that I can't find a way to
> express these two classes together without multiple parameter type classes
> (one parameter for the case/no case and one for the type returned):
>
> class Dictionary d a where
>   add'       :: d a -> (String, a) -> d a
>   ...
>
> instance Dictionary DictNoCase a where
>   add' d (k, v) = ...
>
> -- Dict is the underlying tree implementation and Maybe stores the
> -- value for the null (empty string) key.
> data DictNoCase a = DictNoCase (Dict a) (Maybe a)
>
> class (Dictionary d String) => SubDictionary d where
>   substitute :: d String -> String -> String
>   ...
>
> instance SubDictionary DictNoCase where
>   substitute d s = ...
>
> All the above compiles and seems correct (is it?).
>
> I also provide an empty instance of the two instance types.  For
> DictNoCase, this is
> empty = DictCase Empty Nothing
> where Empty is the empty type constructor for Dict
>
> Now (almost there) elsewhere I want to define a data type that contains
> two of these Dictionaries.  One stores String values.  The other stores
> functions that take this same type and return a result and a copy of the
> type:
>
> data Context s f = (Dictionary s String, Dictionary f (CustomFn s f)) =>
>     Ctx {state :: s String,
>          funcs :: f (CustomFn s f)}
>
> type CustomFn s f = Context s f -> Arg -> IO (Context s f, Result s f)
>
> data Result s f = Attr Name String
>                 | Repeat (CustomFn s f)
>                 ...
>
> newContext = Ctx empty emptyNC
>
> (where empty is the case-sensitive empty dictionary)
>
> Now THAT doesn't compile:
>
> Template.lhs:60:
>     All of the type variables in the constraint `Dictionary s
>                                                             String' are
> already
> in scope
>         (at least one must be universally quantified here)
>     When checking the existential context of constructor `Ctx'
>     In the data type declaration for `Context'
>
> Template.lhs:60:
>     All of the type variables in the constraint `Dictionary f
>                                                             (CustomFn s
> f)' are
> already in scope
>         (at least one must be universally quantified here)
>     When checking the existential context of constructor `Ctx'
>     In the data type declaration for `Context'
>
> where line 60 is "data Context...."
>
> And I can't see what I've done wrong.  Any help gratefully received.
>
> Cheers,
> Andrew
>
> --
> personal web site: http://www.acooke.org/andrew
> personal mail list: http://www.acooke.org/andrew/compute.html
> _______________________________________________
> Haskell mailing list
> Haskell at haskell.org
> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
>
>


-- 
personal web site: http://www.acooke.org/andrew
personal mail list: http://www.acooke.org/andrew/compute.html