
Dear all, I was wondering whether it was possible to write fold expressions more elegantly. Suppose I have the following datastructure: data Expr = Add Expr Expr | Sub Expr Expr | Mul Expr Expr | Eq Expr Expr | B Bool | I Int deriving Show type ExprAlgebra r = (r -> r -> r, -- Add r -> r -> r, -- Sub r -> r -> r, -- Mul r -> r -> r, -- Eq Bool -> r, -- Bool Int -> r -- Int ) foldAlgebra :: ExprAlgebra r -> Expr -> r foldAlgebra alg@(a, b, c ,d, e, f) (Add x y) = a (foldAlgebra alg x) (foldAlgebra alg y) foldAlgebra alg@(a, b, c ,d, e, f) (Sub x y) = b (foldAlgebra alg x) (foldAlgebra alg y) foldAlgebra alg@(a, b, c ,d, e, f) (Mul x y) = c (foldAlgebra alg x) (foldAlgebra alg y) foldAlgebra alg@(a, b, c ,d, e, f) (Eq x y) = d (foldAlgebra alg x) (foldAlgebra alg y) foldAlgebra alg@(a, b, c ,d, e, f) (B b') = e b' foldAlgebra alg@(a, b, c ,d, e, f) (I i) = f i If I am correct, this works, however if we for example would like to replace all Int's by booleans (note: this is to illustrate my problem): replaceIntByBool = foldAlgebra (Add, Sub, Mul, Eq, B, \x -> if x == 0 then B False else B True) As you can see, a lot of "useless" identity code. Can I somehow optimize this? Can someone give me some pointers how I can write this more clearly (or with less code?) So I constantly don't have to write Add, Sub, Mul, for those things that I just want an "identity function"? Thanks in advance! Jun Jie