Changes to Typeable

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

I'm beginning to regret mentioning optimisation -- it's purely an implementation matter.  Yes the same dictionaries get constructed, the runtime behaviour is unchanged. The difference is that when GHC asks "Is type constructor T an instance of Typeable" it would know that the answer is "yes, and the dictionary is called $dfTypeableT".  That's all. Its saves the lookup, and more important, saves the very existence of the table.

I think it would be better to focus the discussion on the question of whether you would ever NOT want a type constructor to be an instance of Typeable

S

| -----Original Message-----
| From: libraries-bounces at haskell.org [mailto:libraries-
| bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf Of Andres Löh
| Sent: 04 October 2012 10:30
| To: Simon Peyton-Jones
| Cc: libraries at haskell.org
| Subject: Re: Changes to Typeable
| 
| > So back to the Plan A vs Plan B discussion.
| 
| I'm sorry, I don't completely understand why Plan A is an
| "optimization". As far as I know, the typechecker doesn't merely have
| the task of answering the question "does Typeable X" hold, but rather it
| has to come up with evidence that "Typeable X" holds. I fail to see how
| even the knowledge that every concrete datatype is in principle Typeable
| makes it any easier to come up with the type representation that's
| required during run-time.
| 
| For example, if you consider
| 
| data AnyTypeable = forall a. (Typeable a) => AnyTypeable a
| 
| and you unpack and use such a value in a function, then clearly the only
| place to get the type representation from is the constructor itself, and
| similarly,
| 
| data Any = forall a. Any a
| 
| should really not have any type representation available at runtime at
| all.
| 
| Similarly, for less extreme cases, we'd still need dictionary
| transformers and plug together type representations from different
| components. So why can we get rid of the instance table? What am I
| missing?
| 
| Cheers,
|   Andres
| 
| --
| Andres Löh, Haskell Consultant
| Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com
| 
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