[Template-haskell] Using a Typ as a Type

[Alastair Reid]

> I've Sean's reply and Alastair's reply to that, and I still can't figure
> out what you are trying to do.  The above code looks weird.
> 	test is a Q [Dec], but you are doing a print in the middle of
> it.  Why?

I have been rewriting Greencard in Template Haskell.

The templates I'm writing do IO because:

1) They need to pass state between calls to templates.
2) They need to generate a file of C code (as Greencard does).

What I really, really wanted to do was use typeclasses to
 implement automatic fillin.  

In Greencard 2, we translate types into DIS invocations using
 the following translation:

  Int     -> int
  String  -> string
  AnyType -> anyType
  Foo Bar -> error "can't handle type applications"

 where we change the first letter to lower case.

In Template Greencard, I wanted users to define these translations by writing 
typeclasses:

  instance DIS Int where dis = int
  instance DIS String where dis = string
  instance DIS AnyType where ...
  instance DIS (Foo a) where ...
  instance DIS Bar where ...

and I'd then write:

  dis :: $ty

to do the lookup.

> TH doesn't support type splices today; that's one of the things I'm
> actively working on.  But I'm not sure if this is what you meant.

It is but it is very important that:

1) We can do dictionary lookups using the spliced type.


2) The lookup happen at compile time so that it can affects the
   code being generated.

3) Instances declared in the code being compiled (like the DIS
   instances above) can be found by this mechanism.  That is,
   I'm not interested in finding any DIS instances that might have
   been present in the source code for ghc.

--
Alastair