I have the code below that I pluged from SO.

My problem is that although I sort of understand how with rewrite True and rewrite False it is suppressed that always the first element of the tuple stays as-is; I cannot find any way to apply this to the last element also. In essence there are times when I would need to change all elements of the tuple but the first and at other times I would need to change all elements except the first and the last. I don't quite understand (yet) how I could do that.

Is there any way to match for a specific element eg. the third from the right or so?

--Joerg


{-# LANGUAGE FlexibleContexts #-}
{-# LANGUAGE TypeFamilies #-}
{-# LANGUAGE TypeOperators #-}

import Data.Typeable
import GHC.Generics

rewrite_
  :: (Generic a, Generic b, Rewriter (Rep a), Rewrite (Rep a) ~ Rep b)
  => a -> b
rewrite_ = to . rewrite False . from

class Rewriter f where
  type Rewrite f :: * -> *
  rewrite :: Bool -> f a -> (Rewrite f) a

instance Rewriter f => Rewriter (M1 i c f) where
  type Rewrite (M1 i c f) = M1 i c (Rewrite f)
  rewrite x = M1 . rewrite x . unM1

instance Typeable c => Rewriter (K1 i c) where
  type Rewrite (K1 i c) = K1 i String
  rewrite False (K1 x) | Just val <- cast x = K1 val
  rewrite _ _ = K1 "NIL"

instance (Rewriter a, Rewriter b) => Rewriter (a :*: b) where
  type Rewrite (a :*: b) = Rewrite a :*: Rewrite b
  rewrite x (a :*: b) = rewrite x a :*: rewrite True b
y0 :: (String, Int, Double)
y0 = ("something", 3, 4.788)

y1 :: (String, String, String, (Int, Int))
y1 = ("something else", "Hello", "NIL", (4,6))

main :: IO ()
main = do
  print (rewrite_ y0 :: (String, String, String))
  print (rewrite_ y1 :: (String, String, String, String))