I have not followed this completely, but do these new rules now allow: class F a b c where f: a -> b -> c and then instance F a a a where ... which gives currenly gives (using -fglasgow-exts): Test.hs:6:0: Illegal instance declaration for `F a a a' (There must be at least one non-type-variable in the instance head Use -fallow-undecidable-instances to permit this) In the instance declaration for `F a a a' I recently ran into this, and I thought it to be perfectly reasonable, but GHC complained. On the other hand: instance F [a] [a] [a] where ... posed no problem, although I still see no non-type-variable in the head, or is [] a non-type-variable? I assumed the complaint was a left-over from the single parameter classes, where indeed having a single variable in an instance declaration does not make much sense. The second example does not follow the old rule (2) below! So rule (2) below is either not correctly implemented or not correctly stated or the error message is confusing, or I am missing something completely. Who can enlighten me? Doaitse because of the old rule (2) below. When I On 2006 feb 06, at 12:35, Ross Paterson wrote:
A patch implementing a relaxed termination constraint is at
http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~ross/instance-termination.patch
Here is the description:
With -fglasgow-exts but not -fallow-undecidable-instances, GHC 6.4 requires that instances be of the following form:
(1) each assertion in the context must constrain distinct variables mentioned in the head, and
(2) at least one argument of the head must be a non-variable type.