[Hugs-users] ~ Swansong [was: TypeCastery]

[Anthony Clayden]

(More from the annals of oh-so-easy in yacc.)

On Thu, 4 Oct 2018 at 12:45 AM, Anthony Clayden <
anthony_clayden at clear.net.nz> wrote:

> A typical consequence of combining FunDeps + Overlapping instances is that
> you have to make the result parameter more general than it needs be, then
> use a TypeCast constraint to improve it.
>
> ... TypeCast, which does use FunDeps to mutually improve/unify its two
> parameters. Nowadays in GHC you'd use the (~) constraint.
>

I got so fed up writing out TypeCast constraints; and I'm so used to
writing infix (~) in GHC, I implemented (~) in Hugs. This is hard-coded
syntax in constraints; I've not implemented type operators. (Mark you, it's
also hard-coded in GHC, because (~) is a reserved symbol.)

This needed only changes to the yacc syntax. From that I insisted that "~"
is a legitimate name for a class. There is a downside that equality
constraints are printed with the '~' prefix -- because all class names are
prefix.

To be clear: this is not as powerful or well-integrated as (~) in GHC. You
still need at the term level to explicitly cast.

Then I got so fed up writing out explicit typeCast calls ..., I picked up
the postfix operators idea
https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/hugs-users/2018-September/000909.html
and invented a postfix operator (~::) to do the job.
Trailing double-colon says I'm doing something typeful; tilde connects it
to the equality constraint.

Then here's the classic, compiled in Hugs, also exhibiting the FunDeps +
Overlaps combo

class TypeEq t t' r  | t t' -> r  where
  typeEq :: t -> t' -> r

instance TypeEq t t TTrue  where
  typeEq _ _ = TTrue

instance (TFalse ~ f) => TypeEq t t' f  where
  typeEq _ _ = (TFalse ~::)      -- without explicit cast, complains type
is not general enough


AntC
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