Udo Stenzel wrote:
> This is your only special case, a single list of a sigle type that is
> different from other lists? To avoid undecidable, incoherent and other
> nasty instances, just do what the Prelude does:
>
> class MyShow t where
> swim :: t -> String
> swimList :: [t] -> String
> swimList [] = "[]"
> swimList xs = '[' : foldr1 (\x -> (swim x ++) . (',' :)) "]" xs
>
> instance MyShow Char where
> swim = (:[])
> swimList = id
>
>
> Untested, but you get the idea. It's pure Haskell 98. Heck, it's
> almost Prelude.Show. It won't scale to more type constructors easily,
> but you didn't ask for that ability, either ;-)
>
>
> Udo.
You example treats Char specially. I want (swim 'a') to be ("'a'") not
("a").
I want every type but String to eventually use the builtin "show"
function. This is not what your example does unless I make it longer.
For example, if I wrote
instance MyShow Int where swim = show
instance MyShow Double where swim = show
... many many instances ...
then it would work.
I need for the compiler to understand that MyShow String has swim = id
and MyShow (any other Show instance but String) has swim = show.
GHC can do this, the working examples with -fallow* prove it. I was
curious if there is some type level programming knowledge in the Haskell
community which would allow me to express (any other Show instance but
String) in a non-overlapping way.
I can read the HList and OOHaskell work, and see the advanced type level
programming, but I am not yet clever enough to derive a solution for MyShow.
--
Chris
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