[Haskell-cafe] Automatically infer Newtype instance

8 Apr 2014

      Hello!
I think, that Newtype instances are transitive, and there is only one
sane definiton is (pack . pack). But in example below I have to use
UndecidableInstances and they seems to loop somewhere
(Context reduction stack overflow; size = 132).

To my understanding, Ghc tries to prove, that exists only one type b,
and somewhy fail at it(It is unclear, why), but is it any way to say to
it that I take responsibility, that ANY b would be nice?

I know about TH, but interested in more elegant solution.

{-# LANGUAGE MultiParamTypeClasses #-}
{-# LANGUAGE FunctionalDependencies #-}
{-# LANGUAGE FlexibleInstances #-}
{-# LANGUAGE TypeFamilies #-}
{-# LANGUAGE UndecidableInstances #-}

import Control.Newtype

newtype A1 = A1 Int deriving (Eq, Show)
newtype A2 = A2 A1  deriving (Eq, Show)

instance Newtype A1 Int where
    pack = A1
    unpack (A1 a) = a

instance Newtype A2 A1 where
    pack = A2
    unpack (A2 a) = a

-- Here comes UndecidableInstances
instance (Newtype a b, Newtype b c) => Newtype a c where
    pack   = pack . pack
    unpack = unpack . unpack

main = let foo :: A2
           foo = pack "46" in
       print foo

--
Best regards, Dmitry Bogatov <KAction@gnu.org>,
Free Software supporter, esperantisto and netiquette guardian.
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