[Haskell] What is the best way to write adapters?

[Ben_Yu at asc.aon.com]

Thanks! Oleg.

This works and it looks nice!

And now, my code can be like:

class FwdSig d where
  (forall a. Sig a => a -> w) -> d -> w

All the types that supports such forwarding are instances of FwdSig.

My Def type is:

instance FwdSig Def where
  fwd f (ClassDef c) = f c
  fwd f (ProtDef p) = f p

instance Sig Def where
  getName = fwd getName
  getMethods = fwd getMethods
  ...

My Native type is:

instance FwdSig Native where
  fwd f (NativeSignature s) = f s
  fwd f (NativeProtocol p) = f p

instance Sig Native where
  getName = fwd getName
  getMethods = fwd getMethods
  ...

Many annoying forwarding functions are gone.

The only thing that I hope to be better is this "getXXX = fwd getXXX" piece
of code. Is it possible to reuse the same piece of code for both Native and
Def and any other possible types?

Inspired by your generic code, I wrote such thing:

instance FwdSig d => Sig d where
  getName = fwd getName
  getMethods = fwd getMethods
  ...

However, my ghc complains about the use of "Sig d".

I followed its recommendation and put -fallow-undecidable-instances flag
with the surprise that the "FwdSig d=>Sig d" instance declaration conflicts
with my other "instance Sig XXX" declarations.

Surely this is not a serious problem, I can live with repeating the
"getXXX=fwd getXXX" several times. Just curious about how further this can
go.

Ben.





oleg at pobox.com@haskell.org on 03/11/2004 01:36:30 PM

Please respond to oleg at pobox.com

Sent by:    haskell-bounces at haskell.org


To:    haskell at haskell.org
cc:    Ben_Yu at asc.aon.com

Subject:    [Haskell] What is the best way to write adapters?


> The code is currently like this:

> instance Sig Def where
>   getName (DefClass c) = getName c
>   getName(DefProtocol p) getName p
>   getName(DefSignature s) = getName s
>   getParents(DefClass c) = getParents c
>   getParents(DefProtocol p) = getParents p
> blah blah blah...
>
> But this seems very annoying.
>
> If I have 4 different constructors in Def, and 5 methods of class Sig,
> (Please bear with me if I'm using some OO terminology because I'm still a
> new FP programmer), I'll have to write 4*5=20 forwarding functions.

Adapters seem by necessity higher-ranked functions. The following is
a stubefied code that uses generic adaptors (the function fwd).

> {-# OPTIONS -fglasgow-exts #-}
> module Foo where
>
> class Sig a where
>   getName :: a -> Int
>   getParents :: a -> String
>   getMethods :: a -> String
>
> data ClassDef = ClassDef
> data ProtocolDef = ProtocolDef
>
> instance Sig ClassDef where
>     getName _ = 0
>     getParents _ = "ClassDef Parents"
>     getMethods _ = "ClassDef Methods"
>
> instance Sig ProtocolDef where
>     getName _ = 1
>     getParents _ = "ProtocolDef Parents"
>     getMethods _ = "ProtocolDef Methods"
>
> data Def = DefClass ClassDef | DefProtocol ProtocolDef
>
> fwd::(forall a. Sig a => a -> w) -> Def -> w
> fwd f (DefClass c) = f c
> fwd f (DefProtocol p) = f p
>
> instance Sig Def where
>     getName = fwd getName
>     getParents = fwd getParents
>     getMethods = fwd getMethods

Tests:

*Foo> getParents ClassDef
"ClassDef Parents"
*Foo> getParents ProtocolDef
"ProtocolDef Parents"
*Foo> getParents (DefClass ClassDef)
"ClassDef Parents"
*Foo> getParents (DefProtocol ProtocolDef)
"ProtocolDef Parents"
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