G'day all.
On Tue, Aug 20, 2002 at 10:57:36AM -0700, Hal Daume III wrote:
> Lists with arbitrary
> elements are possible, but not very useful. After all, what could you do
> with them?
It's often useful to have containers of arbitrary _constrained_ types,
because then you can do something with them. For example, given the
class of partial mappings on orderable keys:
class (Ord k) => Map m k v | m -> k v where
lookupM :: m -> k -> Maybe v
instance (Ord k) => Map (FiniteMap k v) k v where
lookupM = lookupFM
instance (Ord k) => Map [(k,v)] k v where
lookupM m k = case [ v | (k',v) <- m, k == k' ] of
[] -> Nothing
(v:_) -> Just v
instance (Ord k) => Map (k -> Maybe v) k v where
lookupM = id
You can make a list of elements, which can be any type so long as
they are a member of that class:
data MAP k v = forall m. (Map m k v) => MAP m
type ListOfMap k v = [MAP k v]
Then you can do things with it:
lookupLom :: (Ord k) => ListOfMap k v -> k -> [ Maybe v ]
lookupLom xs k = [ lookupM a k | MAP a <- xs ]
test :: [Maybe Int]
test
= lookupLom maps 1
where
maps = [ MAP finiteMap, MAP assocListMap, MAP functionMap ]
finiteMap = listToFM [(1,2)]
assocListMap = [(1,3)]
functionMap = \k -> if k == 1 then Just 4 else Nothing
It's a little unfortunate that you have to introduce the MAP type here.
You can in fact construct a list of this type:
type ListOfMap k v = [ forall m. (Map m k v) => m ]
But then you can't use the elements in the list because the Haskell
type checker can't find the (Map m k v) constraint.
Cheers,
Andrew Bromage
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