On Thu, Jul 10, 2003 at 02:00:37AM -0700, Ashley Yakeley wrote:
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> Ross Paterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > The point about symmetry is a fair one, but unfortunately the Haskell class
> > system imposes a cost on fine-grained class hierarchies,
>
> It does?
There are more instances and methods for people to define, even if some
of them imply others.
As it happens, I would like yet another intermediate class:
class BiFunctor a where
bimap :: (b' -> b) -> (c -> c') -> a b c -> a b' c'
(and I have a client for the class: a useful subset of the arrow notation
needs only this, in fact only the contravariant part.)
Clearly any arrow is also an instance of this class:
bimap b c f = arr b >>> f >>> arr c
but you still have to define bimap even if the type is also an arrow.
Subclasses in Haskell cover a range of relationships, including this
sense where things in the subclass automatically belong to the superclass.
Other examples include Eq => Ord and Functor vs Monad. In such cases it
would be handy if the subclass could define defaults for the superclass
methods (e.g. Ord defining (==)), so that the superclass instance could
be optional.
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