I'll take a swing at this one:
instance Container (Maybe x) [x] where wrapper = isNothing . . .
That isn't a sensible definition of 'wrapper', but I believe without trying to compile it is completely legal. Which wrapper do you use?
You /don't/ have a different matching Container instance, but without the functional dependency you /might/, and ghc barfs.
But liftWrap doesn't require any particular instance, it's a generic function accepting any pair of types for which there is an instance of Container. Instance selection (as I understand it) shouldn't come into play until one applies liftWrap to a particular type, and indeed it does cause problems there: note the type annotations on the last line. That part I understand and accept, or at least have learned to live with.
On Sun, 14 Dec 2008, Mario Bla?evi? wrote:
I have, for a change, a relatively simple problem with type classes. Can somebody explain to me, or point me to an explanation of the behaviour I see?
Here is a short and useless example:
{-# LANGUAGE MultiParamTypeClasses, FlexibleInstances #-}
import Data.Maybe
class Container x y where wrapper :: x -> Bool unwrap :: x -> y rewrap :: y -> x
liftWrap :: Container x y => (y -> y) -> (x -> x) liftWrap f x = (if wrapper x then rewrap . f . unwrap else id) x
instance Container (Maybe x) x where wrapper = isJust unwrap = fromJust rewrap = Just
main = print (liftWrap (succ :: Int -> Int) (Just 1 :: Maybe Int))
GHC 6.10.1 refuses to typecheck the 'wrapper' function in definition of 'liftWrap', with the following error message:
Could not deduce (Container x y) from the context (Container x y1) arising from a use of `wrapper' at Test.hs:11:22-30 Possible fix: add (Container x y) to the context of the type signature for `liftWrap' In the expression: wrapper x In the expression: (if wrapper x then rewrap . f . unwrap else id) x In the definition of `liftWrap': liftWrap f x = (if wrapper x then rewrap . f . unwrap else id) x
Let me clarify that I'm aware that in this particular example a functional dependecy should be used. Also, I can think of a few workarounds for my actual problem, so I'm not asking for any solutions. I'm looking for an explanation. It bugs me that my intuition of how this type class should have worked is completely wrong. The error message does not help, to put it mildly. Where should I go, what should I read? _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe