| typeOf :: a -> TypeRep | | rType :: a -> Typ (or :: a -> Type in the new THSyntax definitions). | | The two are conceptually the same, but they return you different data | types... | Come to think of it, now that we have a concrete syntax, perhaps it'd | be worth merging the definitions of THSyntax's Type and Data.Dynamic's | TypeRep? They're conceptually the same thing, but with different data | representations ... That would make perfect sense. The only tricky bit is that TypeRep is hash-cons'd so that we can guaranteed to compare TypeReps in constant time. It would probably do no harm to hash-cons Typ's too, I guess. With Ralf Laemmel I've been working on a sort of extension to the Typeable class that gives more info for algebraic data types. The module signature is below. We're working on a paper. Let's muse on this. Simon module Data.Generics.Basics ( -- * The Data class for processing constructor applications Data( gfoldl, -- :: ... -> a -> c a toConstr, -- :: a -> Constr fromConstr, -- :: Constr -> a dataTypeOf -- :: a -> DataType ), -- * Constructor representations Constr, -- abstract, instance of: Eq, Show ConIndex, -- alias for Int, start at 1 Fixity(..), -- instance of: Eq, Show DataType, -- abstract, instance of: Show -- * Constructing constructor representations mkConstr, -- :: ConIndex -> String -> Fixity -> Constr mkDataType, -- :: [Constr] -> DataType -- * Observing constructor representations conString, -- :: Constr -> String conFixity, -- :: Constr -> Fixity conIndex, -- :: Constr -> ConIndex stringCon, -- :: DataType -> String -> Maybe Constr indexCon, -- :: DataType -> ConIndex -> Constr maxConIndex, -- :: DataType -> ConIndex dataTypeCons, -- :: DataType -> [Constr]