Hi Ganesh, you are right Simon's answer is not correct. The cause of your problem is I believe quite involved -- I think I know what's going on (Simon: it seems to be an overlap problem indeed but between a different instance and given arising from a superclass when trying to solve a 'silent parameter' wanted) but I can't build the compiler on my OS X tonight to verify my thoughts. I will hopefully be able to say more over the weekend. Can you submit a bug report in the meanwhile? Or I will do it tomorrow. Thanks! d- ________________________________ From: glasgow-haskell-users-bounces@haskell.org [glasgow-haskell-users-bounces@haskell.org] on behalf of Ganesh Sittampalam [ganesh@earth.li] Sent: Friday, February 25, 2011 4:39 PM To: Simon Peyton-Jones Cc: glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org; Sittampalam, Ganesh Subject: Re: weird behaviour of context resolution with FlexibleContexts and TypeFamilies Hi Simon, You talk about the timing of application of the instance declaration instance PatchInspect (PrimOf p)) => Conflict p but the constraint is actually defined in the class declaration, and I don't have any instance declarations for Conflict p itself. class PatchInspect (PrimOf p)) => Conflict p Does that make a difference to your answer, or do you mean that the constraint in the class declaration automatically gives rise to the same behaviour? Ganesh On 25/02/2011 09:06, Simon Peyton-Jones wrote: You are doing something very delicate here, akin to overlapping instances. You have an instance instance PatchInspect (PrimOf p)) => Conflict p and a function clever :: (Conflict (OnPrim p), ..) => ... So if a constraint (Conflict blah) arises in the RHS of clever, the instance declaration will immediately apply; and then the type check fails. But if it just so happens to precisely match the provided constraint (Conflict (OnPrim p)), you want to use the provided constraint. In effect the type signature and the instance overlap. Arguably, GHC should refrain from applying the instance if there is any possibility of a “given” constraint matching. Currently it’s a bit random; but it’s a very weird situation. But first, is this really what you intend? Simon From: glasgow-haskell-users-bounces@haskell.orgmailto:glasgow-haskell-users-bounces@haskell.org [mailto:glasgow-haskell-users-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of Sittampalam, Ganesh Sent: 24 February 2011 07:41 To: glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.orgmailto:glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org Subject: weird behaviour of context resolution with FlexibleContexts and TypeFamilies Hi, If I build the code below with -DVER=2, I get a complaint about PatchInspect (PrimOf p) being missing from the context of cleverNamedResolve. This doesn't happen with -DVER=1 or -DVER=3 I presume that type class resolution is operating slightly differently in the different cases, but it's quite confusing - in the original code joinPatches did something useful and I was trying to inline the known instance definition. I would have expected it to be consistent between all three cases, either requiring the context or not. Is it a bug, or just one of the risks one takes by using FlexibleContexts? I've tried this with GHC 6.12.3 and with 7.0.2RC2. Cheers, Ganesh {-# LANGUAGE CPP, TypeFamilies, FlexibleContexts #-} module Class ( cleverNamedResolve ) where data FL p = FL p class PatchInspect p where instance PatchInspect p => PatchInspect (FL p) where type family PrimOf p type instance PrimOf (FL p) = PrimOf p data WithName prim = WithName prim instance PatchInspect prim => PatchInspect (WithName prim) where class (PatchInspect (PrimOf p)) => Conflict p where resolveConflicts :: p -> PrimOf p instance Conflict p => Conflict (FL p) where resolveConflicts = undefined type family OnPrim p #if VER==1 class FromPrims p where instance FromPrims (FL p) where joinPatches :: FromPrims p => p -> p #else #if VER==2 joinPatches :: FL p -> FL p #else joinPatches :: p -> p #endif #endif joinPatches = id cleverNamedResolve :: (Conflict (OnPrim p) ,PrimOf (OnPrim p) ~ WithName (PrimOf p)) => FL (OnPrim p) -> WithName (PrimOf p) cleverNamedResolve = resolveConflicts . joinPatches ============================================================================== Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://www.credit-suisse.com/legal/en/disclaimer_email_ib.html ============================================================================== _______________________________________________ Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list Glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.orgmailto:Glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users