Proposal: Overloaded Quotes for Template Haskell

Simon Peyton-Jones simonpj at microsoft.com
Sat Dec 31 02:05:57 CET 2011


| Currently quote forms have type "Q Exp" and nested splices expect
| their contents to have type "Q Exp".  I propose that quote forms have
| type "forall m. Quasi m => m Exp" and nested splices expect a body of
| type "m Exp" where the "m" of the nested splice is the same as the "m"
| of the quote form that it is inside of.

Happily they already have that type.  Have a look in Language.Haskell.TH.Syntax:
   newtype Q a = Q { unQ :: forall m. Quasi m => m a }

You want a function from "Q Exp" to "forall m. Quasi m => m Exp".  It would have type

   Q Exp -> forall m. Quasi m => m Exp

or, isomorphically

   forall m. Quasi m => Q Exp -> m Exp

And indeed there is such a function: it's called runQ.

So I think what you want is already available.  

Happy new year

Simon





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