RE: Concrete syntax for open type kind?

Does anyone remember the justification of not having unlifted or open kinds in the source language? They aren’t in the source language because they are a gross hack, with many messy consequences. Particularly the necessary sub-kinding, and the impact on inference. I’m not proud of it. But I do have a plan. Namely to use polymorphism. Currently we have kinds k ::= * | # | ? | k1 -> k2 | ... Instead I propose kinds k ::= TYPE bx | k1 -> k2 | .... boxity bx ::= BOXED | UNBOXED | bv where bv is a boxity variable So · * = TYPE BOXED · # = TYPE UNBOXED · ? = TYPE bv Now error is polymorphic: error :: forall bv. forall (a:TYPE bv). String -> a And now everything will work out smoothly I think. And it should be reasonably easy to expose in the source language. All that said, there’s never enough time to do these things. Simon From: Glasgow-haskell-users [mailto:glasgow-haskell-users-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of Conal Elliott Sent: 16 April 2014 18:01 To: Richard Eisenberg Cc: glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org Subject: Re: Concrete syntax for open type kind? Oops! I was reading ParserCore.y, instead of Parser.y.pp. Thanks. Too bad it's not possible to replicate this type interpretation of `error` and `undefined`. I'm doing some Core transformation, and I have a polymorphic function (reify) that I want to apply to expressions of lifted and unlifted types, as a way of structuring the transformation. When my transformation gets to unlifted types, the application violates the *-kindedness of my polymorphic function. I can probably find a way around. Maybe I'll build the kind-incorrect applications and then make sure to transform them away in the end. Currently, the implementation invokes `error`. Does anyone remember the justification of not having unlifted or open kinds in the source language? -- Conal On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 5:09 PM, Richard Eisenberg mailto:eir@cis.upenn.edu> wrote: What version of the GHC code are you looking at? The parser is currently stored in compiler/parser/Parser.y.pp (note the pp) and doesn’t have these lines. As far as I know, there is no way to refer to OpenKind from source. You’re absolutely right about the type of `undefined`. `undefined` (and `error`) have magical types. GHC knows that GHC.Err defines an `undefined` symbol and gives it its type by fiat. There is no way (I believe) to reproduce this behavior. If you have -fprint-explicit-foralls and -fprint-explicit-kinds enabled, quantified variables of kind * are not given kinds in the output. So, the lack of a kind annotation tells you that `a`’s kind is *. Any other kind (assuming these flags) would be printed. I hope this helps! Richard On Apr 15, 2014, at 7:39 PM, Conal Elliott mailto:conal@conal.net> wrote: I see ‘#’ for unlifted and ‘?’ for open kinds in compiler/parser/Parser.y: akind :: { IfaceKind } : '*' { ifaceLiftedTypeKind } | '#' { ifaceUnliftedTypeKind } | '?' { ifaceOpenTypeKind } | '(' kind ')' { $2 } kind :: { IfaceKind } : akind { $1 } | akind '->' kind { ifaceArrow $1 $3 } However, I don’t know how to get GHC to accept ‘#’ or ‘?’ in a kind annotation. Are these kinds really available to source programs. I see that undefined has an open-kinded type: *Main> :i undefined undefined :: forall (a :: OpenKind). a -- Defined in ‘GHC.Err’ Looking in the GHC.Err source, I just see the following: undefined :: a undefined = error "Prelude.undefined" However, if I try similarly, q :: a q = error "q" I don’t see a similar type: *X> :i q q :: forall a. a -- Defined at ../test/X.hs:12:1 I don't know what kind 'a' has here, nor how to find out. -- Conal _______________________________________________ Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list Glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.orgmailto:Glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users