Hi, please consider the following example (from Mark P. Jones: "Type Classes with Functional Dependencies" LNCS 1782, ESOP 2000), that I've extended with a function "one": class Collects e ce | ce -> e where empty :: ce insert :: e -> ce -> ce member :: e -> ce -> Bool one :: ce -> e -- added just for the sake of demonstration The following function was ok for GHC version 5.02.3: info :: (Collects e ce, Show e) => ce -> String info v = show (one v) However, when I tried to mention the element type "e", that does not occurr in the result type, I got the following error for "show ((one v)::e)": Could not deduce (Collects e ce) from the context () Probable fix: Add (Collects e ce) to the the type signature of an expression arising from use of `one' at Collects.hs:11 In an expression with a type signature: (one v) :: forall e. e In the first argument of `show', namely `((one v) :: forall e. e)' (It did also not help to write "show ((one v)::Collects e ce => e)" Because "ce" determines the type "e" via the functional dependency in "Collects", I think "e" should not be changed/generalized to "forall e. e". (You may think, that "e" should not be mentioned at all, if it is not part of the functionality.) At least the behaviour of GHC seems to be inkonsistent, as it should be possible to supply type signatures to (sub-)expressions. Regards Christian P.S. duplicate "the"-typo in: Add (Collects e ce) to the the type signature of an expression ^^^^^^^