I have a program that makes use of various data types built on top of Arrays.
In some cases, they're data types that contain an Array plus some additonal
information, in others, they're just "newtype" Arrays, so that I can use
typechecking to make sure that I'm not using the wrong kind of object.
I'd really like to define an "ArrayOps" class with all of the operations I
need, and define instances for all of the specific types. I also use
some "raw" Array objects, so it would be even better if I could make an
instance of my class for Array. And, ideally, I'd like to use the Array
operations for my class operations.
So, I want something like:
class ArrayOps a where
(!) :: a -> i -> e
(//) :: a -> (i,e) -> a
bounds :: a -> (i,i)
range :: a -> [i]
'i' and 'e' are the index and element types, respectively.
Obviously, the signatures above reference type variables that aren't declared,
and really must be constrained to be the 'i' and 'e' that were used in
building the type 'a' (which is an Array i e). Something like the following
(though this obviously doesn't work):
class ((Array.Array i e) a) => ArrayOps a where ...
I'm sure there must be a way to do this, but I can't figure out what the
syntax would look like.
Thanks,
Shawn.
