Jason Dagit wrote:
> I tried to create a type class for making instances of Show display a
> custom way. After using my class for a while I found that sometimes
> RealFloats would display as 'NaN' and this is unacceptable. So at
> this point I had something like:
>
> class Show a => StringValue a where
> toString :: a -> String
>
> instance Num a => StringValue a where
> toString = show
>
> instance RealFloat a => StringValue a where
> toString x
> | isNaN x = "" -- as an example
> | otherwise = show x
The simplest solution: replace the constraint RealFloat with its
members. That is, replace
"instance RealFloat a => StringValue a"
with
instance StringValue Float where
toString x
| isNaN x = "" -- as an example
| otherwise = show x
and the same for Double. There are currently only two members of
RealFloat, so code duplication should not be so terrible. Or if it is,
then you can do
> {-# OPTIONS -fglasgow-exts #-}
> {-# OPTIONS -fallow-undecidable-instances #-}
> {-# OPTIONS -fallow-overlapping-instances #-}
>
> class Show a => StringValue a where
> toString :: a -> String
> toString = show
>
> instance Num a => StringValue a -- works for all Num except the following
>
> instance StringValue Float where
> toString = myrealfloatthing
> instance StringValue Double where
> toString = myrealfloatthing
>
> myrealfloatthing x
> | isNaN x = "" -- as an example
> | otherwise = show x
>
> t1 = toString (1::Int)
> t2 = toString (1::Double)
> t3 = toString ((0.0::Double)/0.0)
A more general solution will use generic programming. I doubt however
it will be much shorter than the above.
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