Think about it this way. The matching aspect of a pattern synonym is basically about defining a function to a somewhat weird type, except of course optimized and maybe a bit more general.
data HList :: [*] -> * where
HNil :: HList '[]
HCons :: a -> HList as -> HList (a ': as)
data PatternResult :: ([*] -> Constraint) -> * where
PatternResult :: provides ts => HList ts -> PatternResult provides
type Matcher requires provides = forall x . requires x => x -> PatternResult provides
The smart constructor side of a pattern synonym is much, much simpler! It's just a regular old Haskell value! The only special bit is that it's treated, syntactically, as a constructor. There's simply nothing else worth saying about it, so the less said the better.
I don't know what that means. There's no way to enforce duality at the term level. Enforcing it at the type level prevents me from doing what I want and serves no apparent purpose. Remember that pattern synonyms are all about providing nice syntax, not adding essential expressiveness.
On Apr 20, 2016 1:41 PM, "Carter Schonwald" <carter.schonwald@gmail.com> wrote:Shouldn't the design simply be both directions are the dual of the other, and pure in some sense ?
On Wednesday, April 20, 2016, David Feuer <david.feuer@gmail.com> wrote:To some degree, it probably could be. But I believe that imposing any substantial relationship between the smart constructor and the pattern synonym is likely to fall squarely into the category of things that are subtle, hard, and almost completely useless. In the arrangement I suggested, people would be free to do some things that "don't make sense", and that doesn't bother me in the least.
On Apr 20, 2016 1:27 PM, "Carter Schonwald" <carter.schonwald@gmail.com> wrote:Would that duality be related to the given vs wanted constraints ?
On Wednesday, April 20, 2016, David Feuer <david.feuer@gmail.com> wrote:As far as I can tell from the 7.10 documentation, it's impossible to
make a bidirectional pattern synonym used as a constructor have a
different type signature than when used as a pattern. Has this been
improved in 8.0? I really want something like
class FastCons x xs | xs -> x where
fcons :: x -> xs -> xs
class FastViewL x xs | xs -> x where
fviewl :: xs -> ViewL x xs
pattern x :<| xs <- (fviewl -> ConsL x xs) where
x :<| xs = fcons x xs
This would allow users to learn just *one* name, :<|, that they can
use for sequences that are consable or viewable even if they may not
be the other.
If this is not yet possible, then I think the most intuitive approach
is to sever the notions of "pattern synonym" and "smart constructor".
So I'd write
pattern x :<| xs <- (fviewl -> ConsL x xs)
constructor (:<|) = fcons
The current syntax could easily be desugared to produce *both* a
pattern synonym and a smart constructor in the bidirectional case.
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