Hi all,
I am not a Haskell expert, and I am currently exploring type classes and need
some advice.
I want to define a family of mutually recursive types
as a collection of type classes and then I want to be able
to map these collections of types to a set of other types
using instance declarations.
For example, I have a type family for graphs, consisting of
the types "Node" and "Edge". In another part of my application
I have the types "Person" and "Likes" (a pair of persons), and
I want to map the roles "Node" and "Edge" to "Person" and "Likes",
respectively.
It seems to me that functional dependencies could be a way to
model it (maybe it can also be done much simpler, but I don't know how).
Here is what I tried:
class (Node n, Edge e) => Graph g n e | g -> n, g -> e where
class Node n where
isConnectedTo :: Graph g n e => g -> n -> e -> Bool
class Edge e where
n1 :: Graph g n e => g -> e -> n
n2 :: Graph g n e => g -> e -> n
type Person = String
type Likes = (Person, Person)
data DummyGraph = DummyGraph String
instance Graph DummyGraph Person Likes where
instance Node Person where
isConnectedTo g n (p1,p2) = (p1 == n) || (p2 == n)
instance Edge Likes where
n1 g (p1,p2) = p1
n2 g (p1,p2) = p2
This "DummyGraph" thing is supposed to be used as a kind of "family object"
which stands for a particular type class family. However, this is not yet quite
right because I get the error message
Couldn't match the rigid variable `e' against `(a, b)'
`e' is bound by the type signature for `isConnectedTo'
Expected type: e
Inferred type: (a, b)
When checking the pattern: (p1, p2)
In the definition of `isConnectedTo':
isConnectedTo g n (p1, p2) = (p1 == n) || (p2 == n)
Similar error messages occur in the instance declaration for Edge/Likes.
I don't understand exactly what my error is. Maybe I would need a completely
different strategy to model this.
Any help would be appreciated!
Regards,
Klaus
