Re: [Haskell-cafe] Problems with Type family and Typeable

31 Jul 2017

      Hello,

"Data.Type.Equality.EqStar s t || Elem s ts" resolves to True or False, which are values of type Bool.
To understand why that constraint can't be solved, think about how such a function is compiled. At run time, types are erased.
A "Proxy p" value carries no more information than unit "()", and a "Tagged _ a" value is in fact just an "a" value.
So elemTag is compiled to something equivalent to a function of this type, which has no way of performing the comparison you requested since the type-level boolean was erased:

     -- Original function
     elemTag :: Proxy s -> Tagged (t ': ts) a -> Bool

     -- After type erasure
     elemTag :: () -> a -> Bool

As suggested by the type error, you can reify the boolean "Elem s (t ': ts)" by adding a Typeable constraint, which gets compiled to an additional run time argument.

     elemTag :: forall a s t ts
             .  Typeable (Elem s (t ': ts))
             => Proxy s
             -> Tagged (t ': ts) a
             -> Bool

Li-yao

On 07/31/2017 07:15 AM, Kai Zhang wrote:
...
I got an error when compiling the following codes:
{-# LANGUAGE TypeOperators #-}
{-# LANGUAGE DataKinds #-}
{-# LANGUAGE TypeFamilies #-}
{-# LANGUAGE ScopedTypeVariables #-}
{-# LANGUAGE UndecidableInstances #-}
import Data.Type.Bool
import Data.Type.Equality
import Data.Tagged (Tagged(..))
import Data.Typeable
type family Elem x  xs :: Bool where
     Elem _ '[] = 'False
     Elem a (x ': xs) = a == x || Elem a xs
elemTag :: forall a s t ts . Proxy s
         -> Tagged (t ': ts) a -> Bool
elemTag _ _ = if typeOf (Proxy :: Proxy (Elem s (t ': ts))) == typeOf
(Proxy :: Proxy 'True)
                  then True
                  else False
GHC says:
• No instance for (Typeable
                          (Data.Type.Equality.EqStar s t || Elem s ts))
         arising from a use of ‘typeOf’
     • In the first argument of ‘(==)’, namely
         ‘typeOf (Proxy :: Proxy (Elem s (t : ts)))’
       In the expression:
         typeOf (Proxy :: Proxy (Elem s (t : ts)))
         == typeOf (Proxy :: Proxy True)
       In the expression:
         if typeOf (Proxy :: Proxy (Elem s (t : ts)))
            == typeOf (Proxy :: Proxy True) then
             True
         else
             False
My question: why is ghc unable to deduce that "Data.Type.Equality.EqStar s
t || Elem s ts" resolves to "Bool" which should be an instance of Typeable?
How to fix this?
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Problems with Type family and Typeable

Li-yao Xia