I have a type a which is an instance of the IsString typeclass.
If I use something like
"foobar" :: a
everything works fine.
As soon as I use a function that returns a string, as in
("foo" ++ "bar") :: a
I get a compilation error telling me that
Couldn't match expected type ‘a’ with actual type ‘[Char]’
Expected type: a
Actual type: String
Notice that I have the {-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-} pragma.
Is there something else I should do to solve the compilation error?
The idea of the IsString typeclass is to specify that we can convert a String object to such object (with the fromString :: String -> a function). Furthermore by enabling the OverloadedStrings pragma, we can also write a objects as string literals (in that case these String literals will transparently be converted to as by calling the fromString function).
Note however that IsString does not results in a way to convert as back to Strings. Furthermore functions that are defined on Strings can not be used for such instances (at least not without doing some implementation work).
If you write:
("foo" ++ "bar") :: a
Haskell will derive that you call (++) :: [b] -> [b] -> [b], so as a result it knows that the type of these string literals is a IsString [b] => [b]. So that means that a ~ [b]. Since your type is probably not a list, there is no way that this can match.
Related
Ik this is a dumb question, but if I have this:
a :: B.ByteString
a = "a"
I get an error that says "Couldn't match type B.ByteString with type [Char]". I know what's the problem but I don't know how to fix it, could you help? thx.
Character string literals in Haskell, by default, are always treated as String, which is equivalent to [Char]. Most string-like data structures define a function called pack to convert from, and the bytestring package is no exception (Note that this is pack from Data.ByteString.Char8; the one in Data.ByteString converts from [Word8]).
import Data.ByteString.Char8(pack)
a :: B.ByteString
a = pack "a"
However, GHC also supports an extension called OverloadedStrings. If you're willing to enable this, ByteString implements a typeclass called IsString. With this extension enabled, the type of a string literal like "a" is no longer [Char] and is instead forall a. IsString a => a (similar to how the type of numerical literals like 3 is forall a. Num a => a). This will happily specialize to ByteString if the type is in scope.
{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-}
a :: B.ByteString
a = "a"
If you go this route, make sure you understand the proviso listed in the docs for this instance. For ASCII characters, it won't pose a problem, but if your string has Unicode characters outside the ASCII range, you need to be aware of it.
I am trying to understand the language extension OverloadedStrings from the page https://ocharles.org.uk/posts/2014-12-17-overloaded-strings.html.
When the OverloadedStrings is enabled, then String becomes a type Data.String.IsString a => a:
Prelude Data.String> :t fromString "Foo"
fromString "Foo" :: IsString a => a
In the description, the author has mentioned the following:
By enabling this extension, string literals are now a call to the
fromString function, which belongs to the IsString type class.
What does string literals are now a call to the fromString function ?
and also the author has mentioned:
This polymorphism is extremely powerful, and it allows us to write
embedded domain specific languages in Haskell source code, without
having to introduce new constructs for otherwise normal values.
what does without having to introduce new constructs for otherwise normal values mean?
When the OverloadedStrings is enabled, then String becomes a type Data.String.IsString a => a
No that is incorrect. A String remains a String. It has only effect on string literals, not variables that have as type a String, and these still can be Strings.
What does string literals are now a call to the fromString function?
It means that if you write a string literal, like "foo", Haskell implicitly writes fromString "foo", and thus you can use this like any IsString object.
what does without having to introduce new constructs for otherwise normal values mean?
It means that we can make our own types for which we can write some sort of "mini-parser", and thus write these objects as string literals in our code. For example if we make a datatype like:
newtype BoolList = BoolList [Bool] deriving Show
then we can write our own parser
instance IsString BoolList where
fromString = BoolList . map toBool
where toBool '1' = True
toBool _ = False
Now we can for example define a list of Bools as:
myboollist :: BoolList
myboollist = "10110010001"
So then we get:
Prelude Data.String> myboollist
BoolList [True,False,True,True,False,False,True,False,False,False,True]
We here thus wrote a string literal "10110010001", and that means that implictly, we wrote fromString "10110010001". Since the type of myboollist is BoolList, it is here clear to what the string literal is parsed.
This thus can be useful if some data types are complex, our would take a lot of code to construct an object.
Since the fromString call is however postponed, and frequently not all possible strings map to a value of the type (here it is the case, although it is debatable if it is good to just fill in False for everything else than '1'), it thus can raise errors at runtime when the string turns out to be "unparsable".
what does without having to introduce new constructs for otherwise normal values mean?
The next sentence says
So why should string literals be any different?
so this one refers primarily to number literals. Consider e.g. a type defining polynomials. Because + and * can only be applied to arguments of the same type, if we want
2*x^3 + 3*x :: Poly Int
to be legal, 2 and 3 have to be of type Poly Int; otherwise you'd need either
a separate operator to multiply a polynomial by a number: 2.*x^3 + 3.^x.
a constructor for a constant polynomial: (C 2)*x^3 + (C 3)*x
An example for string literals is given at the end:
However, SQL queries are notorious for injection attacks when we concatenate strings. Interestingly, postgresql-simple provides a Query type that only has a IsString instance. This means that it’s very lightweight to write a literal query, but the moment we want to start concatenating strings for our query, we have to be very explicit.
I'm passing a (strict) ByteString to something expecting a System.IO.FilePath, which is declared as type FilePath = String. I'm also using {-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-}. I've had conversions in some places happen automatically, but here it does not. What have I got wrong?
Main.hs:33:40: error:
• Couldn't match type ‘ByteString’ with ‘[Char]’
Expected type: FilePath
Actual type: ByteString
The {-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-} pragma only works for string literals, like "a string". In that case, Haskell implicitly places a fromString before every string literal, so it rewrites a string literal as "a string" to fromString "a string". This only happens for literals.
In Haskell, as far as I know, there are no implicit conversions. Conversions between for instance Int and Float are all explicit.
Furthermore note that the IsString typeclass only has a function fromString :: String -> a. So that means it works only from a string to that instance (here ByteString), not the other way around.
You can use the unpack :: ByteString -> String to convert the ByteString to a String.
IIRC, the OverloadedStrings extension doesn't enable magical conversion between different types of data. What it does is that when you write a string literal like "foo", the compiler can treat that literal as not only a String, but also as a ByteString.
You probably need something like unpack to convert ByteString to String.
I have a simple question, although Lists of Chars seem equivalent to Strings, they are not functionally working the same. if I have a nested List of Chars, of type [[Char]] that I would like to convert to a [String], how would I go about doing this?
When I try to perform a function on the [[Char]] and treat it as though it is a string I get:
Couldn't match expected type `([String] -> (Int, Int, Board)) -> t'
with actual type `[[Char]]'
When I try to declare that type String = [[Char]] I get:
Ambiguous occurrence `String'
It could refer to either `Main.String', defined at Testing.hs:19:1
or `Prelude.String',
imported from `Prelude' at Testing.hs:16:1-14
(and originally defined in `GHC.Base')
Those two types are completely identical, because String is a type synonym for [Char]. The definition of String is
type String = [Char]
The type keyword means it's a type synonym. A type synonym is always interchangeable with the type it is defined to be.
You can see this in GHCi like this (note that Haskell does not allow casting):
ghci> let test :: [Char]; test = "abc"
ghci> test :: String
"abc"
ghci> :t (test :: [Char]) :: String
(test :: [Char]) :: String :: String
When I try to declare that type String = [[Char]] I get:
Ambiguous occurrence `String'
It could refer to either `Main.String', defined at Testing.hs:19:1
or `Prelude.String',
imported from `Prelude' at Testing.hs:16:1-14
(and originally defined in `GHC.Base')
You are getting this error because your definition of String conflicts with the one already defined in base and exported by the Prelude. Remove your definition and use the one that already exists instead.
Why does the Haskell base package only define the IsString class to have a conversion from String to 'like-string' value, and not define the inverse transformation, from 'like-string' value to String?
The class should be defined as:
class IsString a where
fromString :: String -> a
toString :: a -> String
ref: http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/base/4.4.0.0/doc/html/Data-String.html
The reason is IMHO that IsString's primary purpose is to be used for string literals in Haskell source code (or (E)DSLs -- see also Paradise: A two-stage DSL embedded in Haskell) via the OverloadedStrings language extension in an analogous way to how other polymorphic literals work (e.g. via fromRational for floating point literals or fromInteger for integer literals)
The term IsString might be a bit misleading, as it suggests that the type-class represents string-like structures, whereas it's really just to denote types which have a quoted-string-representation in Haskell source code.
If you desire to use toString :: a -> String, I think you're simply forgetting about show :: a -> String, or more properly Show a => show :: a -> String.
If you want to operate on a type both having a :: a -> String and :: String -> a, you can simply put those type-class constraints on the functions.
doubleConstraintedFunction :: Show a, IsString a => a -> .. -> .. -> a
We carefully note that we avoid defining type classes having a set of functions that can as well be split into two subclasses. Therefor we don't put toString in IsString.
Finally, I must also mention about Read, which provides Read a => String -> a. You use read and show for very simple serialization. fromString from IsString has a different purpose, it's useful with the language pragma OverloadedStrings, then you can very conveniently insert code like "This is not a string" :: Text. (Text is a (efficient) data-structure for Strings)