[Haskell] A puzzle and an annoying feature

[Daan Leijen]

Lennart Augustsson wrote:
> [snip]
> So in what sense is this really ambiguous?
> 
> I think it would be quite reasonable to allow the Puzzle module
> to compile, resolving `a' to be Bool.  I.e., if there is only one
> instance that can satisfy a constraint and there is no possibility
> of adding instances outside the compiled module, I think resolving the
> overloading makes sense.

You may be interested in a recent paper by Bastiaan Heeren and Juriaan
Hage [1] about type class directives. The "closed" directive in that 
paper is more or less implied by your example. Here is a quote from the 
paper:

"The main advantage of a closed type class is that we know the fixed set 
of instances. Using this knowledge, we can influence the type inference 
process. As discussed in the introduction to Section 2, we can reject 
definitions early on (in case the set of instances for a certain type 
class is empty) or improve a type variable to a certain type (in case 
the set of instances is a singleton)."

All the best,
  -- Daan Leijen.

[1] http://www.cs.uu.nl/~bastiaan/papers.html#typeclassdirectives
     (to appear in PADL 2005)		


> 
>     -- Lennart
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