"Data.TupleFields" for review

[Henning Thielemann]

On Wed, 8 Aug 2007, Samuel Bronson wrote:

> Hi. I wrote a module and dons suggested I ask you guys for some tips.
> Here's a good deal of it:
>
> module Data.TupleFields where
>
> import Data.Tuple
>
> class Field1 t f | t -> f where
>     field1   :: t -> f
>     field1_u :: (f -> f) -> (t -> t)
>     field1_s :: f -> (t -> t)
>     field1_s x = field1_u (const x)

Somewhen in the past I proposed a different usage of the field names of
Haskell record fields:
 http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Record_access
  Translated to the tuple issue, I use only one function of type
    field1 :: f -> t -> (f,t)
  which is a combination of 'get' and 'set'.
  Using this function you can implement a generic 'set', 'get', and
'update'. Of course, you can argue that it is bad style to put the
distinct 'set' and 'get' functionalities into one function. Nevertheless,
I think 'field1_u' should not be a class method, but there should be a
separate 'update' function which combines 'field1_s' and 'field1'. I would
also rename 'field' to 'field_g' or better use 'field1get', 'field1set',
'field1update' or 'field1modify' (in analogy to State monad from MTL).



An excerpt with basic functions:


type Accessor r a  =  a -> r -> (a, r)

{- | Set the value of a field. -}
set :: Accessor r a -> a -> r -> r
set f x = snd . f x

{- | Get the value of a field. -}
get :: Accessor r a -> r -> a
get f = fst . f undefined

{- | Transform the value of a field by a function. -}
modify :: Accessor r a -> (a -> a) -> (r -> r)
modify f g rOld =
   let (a,rNew) = f (g a) rOld
   in  rNew