This sounds like a thing that should be in the GHC API (the tyvar to provenance lookup). Alan On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 2:48 PM, Richard Eisenberg wrote:

Interesting problem & solution.

Here's a wacky idea, from a position of utter ignorance about your environment: could you use color? Already, when I saw `b :: a` in the commentary there, where `b` is in scope as a type variable, it seemed wrong to me.

In any case, I can answer your simpler question: yes, with some work, you can get from a tyvar to its provenance. A tyvar's Name will have its binding location in it. If you also keep track of binding locations as you spot foralls, you should be able to match them up. In theory.

Richard

On Oct 19, 2016, at 7:45 AM, Christopher Done wrote:

We've encountered a problem in Intero which is that when inspecting types of expressions and patterns, sometimes it happens that the type, when pretty printing, yields variables of the same name but which have different provenance.

Here's a summary of the issue:

https://github.com/commercialhaskell/intero/issues/280# issuecomment-254784904

And a strawman proposal of how it could be solved:

https://github.com/commercialhaskell/intero/issues/280# issuecomment-254787927

What do you think?

Also, if I were to implement the strawman proposal, is it possible to recover from a `tyvar :: Type` its original quantification/its "forall"? I've had a look through the API briefly and it looks like a _maybe_.

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Chris As far as I understand it: · You are plucking a type from the midst of a syntax tree, and displaying it. · That type might well mention type variables that are bound “further out” o either by a forall (if this is a sub-tree of a type) o or by a big lambda · There are some tricky UI issues in how to display such types to the user. Generally, I think it’s mainly up to you to track which type variables are in scope from “further out”. It’s not a property that is stable under transformation, so it’s not part of the TyVar. The typechecker itself uses “tidying” to avoid accidentally displaying distinct type variables in the same way. See TyCoRep.tidyType and related functions. They may be useful to you too. Hard for me to say more… I’m swamped, and there are genuine UI issues here. Maybe some folk on Haskell Café might be interested. Simon From: Christopher Done [mailto:chrisdone@gmail.com] Sent: 21 October 2016 15:07 To: Simon Peyton Jones Cc: ghc-devs@haskell.org Subject: Re: How to best display type variables with the same name On 19 October 2016 at 17:00, Simon Peyton Jones simonpj@microsoft.comhttps://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmailto%3Asimonpj%40microsoft.com&data=02%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C4c125c4fe1834a3a959708d3f9bb9d1b%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636126556597550377&sdata=hGnspUNnWUxTUXA%2FS%2F%2B7mw6J2WyqirrsacU21TGRk0U%3D&reserved=0 wrote: I’m afraid I didn’t understand the issue in the link below. It speaks of “querying the type”, but I’m not sure what that means. A GHCi session perhaps? Does this relate to the way GHCi displays types? I’m a bit lost. A from-the-beginning example, showing steps and what the unexpected behaviour is would be helpful (to me anyway) Sure. I’ll explain from top-level down: · In this case “querying the type” means running the :type-at command in Intero (which itself is a fork of GHCi’s codebase around GHC 7.10): https://github.com/commercialhaskell/intero/blob/master/src/InteractiveUI.hs...https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fcommercialhaskell%2Fintero%2Fblob%2Fmaster%2Fsrc%2FInteractiveUI.hs%23L1693-L1713&data=02%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C4c125c4fe1834a3a959708d3f9bb9d1b%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636126556597550377&sdata=C9rd1twSgpzdJ9UbdUZL4h8oCMBUrXJKGYjSlaoqrqc%3D&reserved=0 It accepts a file name, line-col to line-col span and prints the type of that expression/pattern. As you can see in that function it uses printForUserModInfo (from GhcMonad), similar to (scroll above) the printForUser for GHCi’s regular :type command. · Where does that info come from? When we load a module in Intero, we perform an additional step of “collecting info” here: https://github.com/commercialhaskell/intero/blob/master/src/GhciInfo.hs#L73https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fcommercialhaskell%2Fintero%2Fblob%2Fmaster%2Fsrc%2FGhciInfo.hs%23L73&data=02%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C4c125c4fe1834a3a959708d3f9bb9d1b%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636126556597550377&sdata=lI4KU9JbM3tb7ZrEp684eHi1EixchPn1aeOXsUab6sU%3D&reserved=0 That info, for each node in the AST, is ultimately stored in a SpanInfo: https://github.com/commercialhaskell/intero/blob/master/src/GhciTypes.hs#L28...https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fcommercialhaskell%2Fintero%2Fblob%2Fmaster%2Fsrc%2FGhciTypes.hs%23L28-L39&data=02%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C4c125c4fe1834a3a959708d3f9bb9d1b%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636126556597550377&sdata=MLkyE0K2jJL%2FOE%2BnMMl1IuJ633u2jTL16BIz%2F0lK%2FEo%3D&reserved=0 Which we then use for :type-at. So in summary we collect info from tm_typechecked_source, keep that for later, and then when the user’s editor asks via e.g. :type-at X.hs 1 5 1 7 “what is the type of the thing at this point?” we use GHC’s regular pretty printing function to print that type. That actually all works splendidly. For example, if we query foo g f = maybe g f -- ^ here or ^ here yields g :: b foo g f = maybe g f -- ^ here or ^ here yields: f :: a -> b The tricky part arises in this example: https://github.com/commercialhaskell/intero/issues/280#issuecomment-25478490...https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fcommercialhaskell%2Fintero%2Fissues%2F280%23issuecomment-254784904&data=02%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C4c125c4fe1834a3a959708d3f9bb9d1b%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636126556597550377&sdata=r6WMD%2BUl6ilAyDX4V%2FibPSQqM9UPlBPrOUCMjjmHj9c%3D&reserved=0 Which is that we have two perfectly cromulent types from the AST that are both a in isolation, but are actually different. They will have different Unique values in their Name’s and come from different implicit forall‘s. The question is what’s a good way to communicate this to the user? This is partly a “user interface” question, and on the side a “given an ideal UI, do we have the necessary info the GHC API?” If it helps, I could probably spend some time making an isolated module that uses the GHC API to compile a file and then report these types. Ciao! ​