The proper type for callCC would be rank-3. The current form is an under-approximation that only allows you to choose to use the continuation at one type.

Going higher rank (usefully) is still pretty straight-forward. There is the Mendler-style encoding of functors that gets used every once in a while in recursion-schemes work. It adds a rank to get rid of a Functor constraint. This is basically replacing a functor f with (forall b. (a -> b) -> f b), which is the same as the Yoneda f a newtype.

For more information, see some of the lovely examples in https://www.ioc.ee/~tarmo/papers/msfp08.pdf like

update :: (forall c’. (forall y’. (y’ -> c’) -> (y’ -> Mu f) -> f y’ -> c’) -> y -> c’) -> (Mu f -> c) -> (forall c’. (forall y’. (y’ -> c) -> (y’ -> c’) -> f y’ -> c’) -> y -> c’)

-Edward

On Mon, Apr 2, 2018 at 11:36 PM, Timotej Tomandl <timotomandl@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,

So we need rank-2 type in runST :: (forall s. ST s a) -> a, to prevent s from appearing in a.

I have been thinking about this for a bit, but I failed to come up with a practical situation, where rank-3 types are necessary for safety of some abstraction.

The rank-3 example in here and any other I found, look very synthetic, i.e. limiting computation to id:
https://ocharles.org.uk/blog/guest-posts/2014-12-18-rank-n-types.html
and compared to the runST example of limiting a scope of a type variable for purposes of safety looks unnatural.
Could anyone please point me to a practical example of rank-3 polymorphism, where it is necessary for safety of an abstraction, if it exists?

I suspect there is a situation, where rank-3 is necessary for maintaining abstration exists, but I can't think of any.
Any ideas about such situations and even better situations where this is used on hackage?

Timotej Tomandl

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