Proxy and new-typeable

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

Good idea!  Simple, and I see no downsides.

Pedro is putting in place a new Typeable library (using kind polymorphism) for GHC 7.8.  Pedro, might you incorporate this?

Simon

|  -----Original Message-----
|  From: libraries-bounces at haskell.org [mailto:libraries-bounces at haskell.org] On
|  Behalf Of Shachaf Ben-Kiki
|  Sent: 26 January 2013 04:07
|  To: libraries at haskell.org
|  Subject: Proxy and new-typeable
|  
|  I see that the new-typeable branch in GHC is using "typeRep :: forall a.
|  Typeable a => Proxy a -> TypeRep" rather than "typeOf :: forall a. Typeable a
|  => a -> TypeRep". This is clearly a big improvement over using undefined
|  everywhere.
|  
|  I'd like to suggest a small change, if it hasn't been brought up before --
|  "typeRep :: forall proxy a. Typeable a => proxy a -> TypeRep". This makes
|  typeRep compatible with any other Proxy type, since it doesn't use any
|  properties of the concrete type -- it just uses it to pass information about
|  the "a". Things that consume a Proxy don't ever need to refer to Proxy
|  explicitly.
|  
|  This would make Typeable compatible with other Proxy libraries, like the one in
|  "tagged". It would also make it compatible with any other type of kind * -> *
|  -- for example, "typeRep ([] :: [Int])" would be a valid, and arguable more
|  convenient, syntax for using typeRep. "Nothing :: Maybe Int" and so on would
|  work too. So things that produce a "proxy" don't need to refer to Proxy
|  explicitly either.
|  
|  Possibly this would make the Proxy type entirely unnecessary. If it stays,
|  though, I suggest that it belongs in a module other than Data.Typeable.Internal
|  -- it's a useful type for many other things, and as long as it's in base and
|  exposed to users, it might as well be treated as a type in its own right. It's
|  also a monad, can provide a variant of `asTypeOf`, and so on.
|  
|      Shachaf
|  
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