I'm writing a compiler where I'm using GADTs for my IR but standard data types for my everything else. I'm having trouble during the conversion from the old data type to the GADT. I've attempted to recreate the situation with a smaller/simplified language below.
To start with, I have the following data types:
data OldLVal = VarOL Int -- The nth variable. Can be used to construct a Temp later.
| LDeref OldLVal
data Exp = Var Int -- See above
| IntT Int32
| Deref Exp
data Statement = AssignStmt OldLVal Exp
| ...
I want to convert these into this intermediate form:
{-# LANGUAGE DataKinds #-}
{-# LANGUAGE GADTs #-}
{-# LANGUAGE KindSignatures #-}
-- Note: this is a Phantom type
data Temp a = Temp Int
data Type = IntT
| PtrT Type
data Command where
Assign :: NewLVal a -> Pure a -> Command
...
data NewLVal :: Type -> * where
VarNL :: Temp a -> NewLVal a
DerefNL :: NewLVal ('PtrT ('Just a)) -> NewLVal a
data Pure :: Type -> * where
ConstP :: Int32 -> Pure 'IntT
ConstPtrP :: Int32 -> Pure ('PtrT a)
VarP :: Temp a -> Pure a
At this point, I just want to write a conversion from the old data type to the new GADT. For right now, I have something that looks like this.
convert :: Statement -> Either String Command
convert (AssignStmt oldLval exp) = do
newLval <- convertLVal oldLval -- Either String (NewLVal a)
pure <- convertPure exp -- Either String (Pure b)
-- return $ Assign newLval pure -- Obvious failure. Can't ensure a ~ b.
pure' <- matchType newLval pure -- Either String (Pure a)
return $ Assign newLval pure'
-- Converts Pure b into Pure a. Should essentially be a noop, but simply
-- proves that it is possible.
matchType :: NewLVal a -> Pure b -> Either String (Pure a)
matchType = undefined
I realized that I couldn't write convert trivially, so I attempted to solve the problem using this idea of matchType which acts as a proof that these two types are indeed equal. The question is: how do I actually write matchType? This would be much easier if I had fully dependent types (or so I'm told), but can I finish this code here?
An alternative to this would be to somehow provide newLval as an argument to convertPure, but I think that essentially is just attempting to use dependent types.
Any other suggestions are welcome.
If it helps, I also have a function that can convert an Exp or OldLVal to its type:
class Typed a where
typeOf :: a -> Type
instance Typed Exp where
...
instance Typed OldLVal where
...
EDIT:
Thanks to the excellent answers below, I've been able to finish writing this module.
I ended up using the singletons package mentioned below. It was a little strange at first, but I found it pretty reasonable to use after I started understanding what I was doing. However, I did run into one pitfall: The type of convertLVal and convertPure requires an existential to express.
data WrappedPure = forall a. WrappedPure (Pure a, SType a)
data WrappedLVal = forall a. WrappedLVal (NewLVal a, SType a)
convertPure :: Exp -> Either String WrappedPure
convertLVal :: OldLVal -> Either String WrappedLVal
This means that you'll have to unwrap that existential in convert, but otherwise, the answers below show you the way. Thanks so much once again.
You want to perform a comparison at runtime on some type level data (namely the Types by which your values are indexed). But by the time you run your code, and the values start to interact, the types are long gone. They're erased by the compiler, in the name of producing efficient code. So you need to manually reconstruct the type level data that was erased, using a value which reminds you of the type you'd forgotten you were looking at. You need a singleton copy of Type.
data SType t where
SIntT :: SType IntT
SPtrT :: SType t -> SType (PtrT t)
Members of SType look like members of Type - compare the structure of a value like SPtrT (SPtrT SIntT) with that of PtrT (PtrT IntT) - but they're indexed by the (type-level) Types that they resemble. For each t :: Type there's precisely one SType t (hence the name singleton), and because SType is a GADT, pattern matching on an SType t tells the type checker about the t. Singletons span the otherwise strictly-enforced separation between types and values.
So when you're constructing your typed tree, you need to track the runtime STypes of your values and compare them when necessary. (This basically amounts to writing a partially verified type checker.) There's a class in Data.Type.Equality containing a function which compares two singletons and tells you whether their indexes match or not.
instance TestEquality SType where
-- testEquality :: SType t1 -> SType t2 -> Maybe (t1 :~: t2)
testEquality SIntT SIntT = Just Refl
testEquality (SPtrT t1) (SPtrT t2)
| Just Refl <- testEquality t1 t2 = Just Refl
testEquality _ _ = Nothing
Applying this in your convert function looks roughly like this:
convert :: Statement -> Either String Command
convert (AssignStmt oldLval exp) = do
(newLval, newLValSType) <- convertLVal oldLval
(pure, pureSType) <- convertPure exp
case testEquality newLValSType pureSType of
Just Refl -> return $ Assign newLval pure'
Nothing -> Left "type mismatch"
There actually aren't a whole lot of dependently typed programs you can't fake up with TypeInType and singletons (are there any?), but it's a real hassle to duplicate all of your datatypes in both "normal" and "singleton" form. (The duplication gets even worse if you want to pass singletons around implicitly - see Hasochism for the details.) The singletons package can generate much of the boilerplate for you, but it doesn't really alleviate the pain caused by duplicating the concepts themselves. That's why people want to add real dependent types to Haskell, but we're a good few years away from that yet.
The new Type.Reflection module contains a rewritten Typeable class. Its TypeRep is GADT-like and can act as a sort of "universal singleton". But programming with it is even more awkward than programming with singletons, in my opinion.
matchType as written is not possible to implement, but the idea you are going for is definitely possible. Do you know about Data.Typeable? Typeable is a class that provides some basic reflective operations for inspecting types. To use it, you need a Typeable a constraint in scope for any type variable a you want to know about. So for matchType you would have
matchType :: (Typeable a, Typeable b) => NewLVal a -> Pure b -> Either String (Pure a)
It needs also to infect your GADTs any time you want to hide a type variable:
data Command where
Assign :: (Typeable a) => NewLVal a -> Pure a -> Command
...
But if you have the appropriate constraints in scope, you can use eqT to make type-safe runtime type comparisons. For example
-- using ScopedTypeVariables and TypeApplications
matchType :: forall a b. (Typeable a, Typeable b) => NewLVal a -> Pure b -> Either String (Pure b)
matchType = case eqT #a #b of
Nothing -> Left "types are not equal"
Just Refl -> {- in this scope the compiler knows that
a and b are the same type -}
I have a cache with Dynamic values. Some of them have the type Delayed a.
Normally when I access the cache, I know the type a, so it's not a problem, I can use fromDynamic to cast to Maybe a.
I would like to call a function which doesn't need to know anything about the type a on a list of Dynamic. (The method is cancel :: Delay a -> IO ()).
Is there a way to do so ?
Basically I need a way to do get from Dynamic to Forall a . Delayed a ?
Edit
For information, Delayed holds a pending asynchronous value and a MVar to start or Cancel it. It is equivalent to
data Delayed m a = Delayed { blocker :: MVar Bool, async :: Async m a }
Such values are stored in a cache (which use Dynamic and store other things). When displaying the cache status, I need to be able to get the status of Delayed value (which involve accessing the blocker but has nothing to do with the actual value.
A value of type forall a . X a is a value which can be instantiated to any of X Int, X Bool, X String, etc. Presumably, your cache stores values of many different types, but no single value is valid at every possible type parameter. What you actually need is a value of type exists a . Delayed a. However, Haskell doesn't have first-class existential quantifiers, so you must encode that type in some way. One particular encoding is:
castToDelayed :: (forall a . Typeable a => Delayed a -> r) -> Dynamic -> r
Assume that you have this function; then you can simply write castToDelayed cancel :: Dynamic -> IO (). Note that the function parameter to castToDelayed provides a Typeable constraint, but you can freely ignore that constraint (which is what cancel is doing). Also note this function must be partial due to its type alone (clearly not every Dynamic is a Delayed a for some a), so in real code, you should produce e.g. Maybe r instead. Here I will elide this detail and just throw an error.
How you actually write this function will depend on which version of GHC you are using (the most recent, 8.2, or some older version). On 8.2, this is a very nice, simple function:
{-# LANGUAGE ViewPatterns #-}
-- NB: probably requires some other extensions
import Data.Dynamic
import Type.Reflection
castToDelayed :: (forall a . Typeable a => Delayed a -> r) -> Dynamic -> r
castToDelayed k (Dynamic (App (eqTypeRep (typeRep :: TypeRep Delayed) -> Just HRefl) a) x)
= withTypeable a (k x)
castToDelayed _ _ = error "Not a Delayed"
(Aside: at first I thought the Con pattern synonym would be useful here, but on deeper inspection it seems entirely useless. You must use eqTypeRep instead.)
Briefly, this function works as follows:
It pattern matches on the Dynamic value to obtain the actual value (of some existentially quantified type a) stored within, and the representation of its type (of type TypeRep a).
It pattern matches on the TypeRep a to determine if it is an application (using App). Clearly, Delayed a is the application of a type constructor, so that is the first thing we must check.
It compares the type constructor (the first argument to App) to the TypeRep corresponding to Delayed (note you must have an instance Typeable Delayed for this). If that comparison is successful, it pattern matches on the proof (that is Just HRefl) that the first argument to App and Delayed are in fact the same type.
At this point, the compiler knows that a ~ Delayed x for some x. So, you can call the function forall a . Typeable a => Delayed a -> r on the value x :: a. It must also provide the proof that x is Typeable, which is given precisely by a value of type TypeRep x - withTypeable reifies this value-level proof as a type-level constraint (alternatively, you could have the input function take as argument TypeRep a, or just omit the constrain altogether, since your specific use case doesn't need it; but this type is the most general possible).
On older versions, the principle is basically the same. However, TypeRep did not take a type parameter then; you can pattern match on it to discover if it is the TypeRep corresponding to Delayed, but you cannot prove to the compiler that the value stored inside the Dynamic has type Delayed x for some x. It will therefore require unsafeCoerce, at the step where you are applying the function k to the value x. Furthermore, there is no withTypeable before GHC 8.2, so you will have to write the function with type (forall a . Delayed a -> r) -> Dynamic -> r instead (which, fortunately, is enough for your use case); or implement such a function yourself (see the source of the function to see how; the implementation on older versions of GHC will be similar, but will have type TypeRep -> (forall a . Typeable a => Proxy a -> r) -> r instead).
Here is how you implement this in GHC < 8.2 (tested on 8.0.2). It is a horrible hack, and I make no claim it will correctly in all circumstances.
{-# LANGUAGE DeriveDataTypeable, MagicHash, ScopedTypeVariables, PolyKinds, ViewPatterns #-}
import Data.Dynamic
import Data.Typeable
import Unsafe.Coerce
import GHC.Prim (Proxy#)
import Data.Proxy
-- This part reifies a `Typeable' dictionary from a `TypeRep'.
-- This works because `Typeable' is a class with a single field, so
-- operationally `Typeable a => r' is the same as `(Proxy# a -> TypeRep) -> r'
newtype MagicTypeable r (kp :: KProxy k) =
MagicTypeable (forall (a :: k) . Typeable a => Proxy a -> r)
withTypeRep :: MagicTypeable r (kp :: KProxy k)
-> forall a . TypeRep -> Proxy a -> r
withTypeRep d t = unsafeCoerce d ((\_ -> t) :: Proxy# a -> TypeRep)
withTypeable :: forall r . TypeRep -> (forall (a :: k) . Typeable a => Proxy a -> r) -> r
withTypeable t k = withTypeRep (MagicTypeable k) t Proxy
-- The type constructor for Delayed
delayed_tycon = fst $ splitTyConApp $ typeRep (Proxy :: Proxy Delayed)
-- This is needed because Dynamic doesn't export its constructor, and
-- we need to pattern match on it.
data DYNAMIC = Dynamic TypeRep Any
unsafeViewDynamic :: Dynamic -> DYNAMIC
unsafeViewDynamic = unsafeCoerce
-- The actual implementation, much the same as the one on GHC 8.2, but more
-- 'unsafe' things
castToDelayed :: (forall a . Typeable a => Delayed a -> r) -> Dynamic -> r
castToDelayed k (unsafeViewDynamic -> Dynamic t x) =
case splitTyConApp t of
(((== delayed_tycon) -> True), [a]) ->
withTypeable a $ \(_ :: Proxy (a :: *)) -> k (unsafeCoerce x :: Delayed a)
_ -> error "Not a Delayed"
I don't know what Delayed actually is, but lets assume it's defined as follows for testing purposes:
data Delayed a = Some a | None deriving (Typeable, Show)
Then consider this simple test case:
test0 :: Typeable a => Delayed a -> String
test0 (Some x) = maybe "not a String" id $ cast x
test0 None = "None"
test0' =
let c = castToDelayed test0 in
[ c (toDyn (None :: Delayed Int))
, c (toDyn (Some 'a'))
, c (toDyn (Some "a")) ]
Why not define
{-# LANGUAGE ExistentialQuantification #-}
data Delayed' = forall a. Delayed' (Delayed a)
and then store than in the Dynamic? You can then cast it out of the dynamic, case on it, and pass the result to cancel. (Depending on what your use case is you may no longer even need the Dynamic.)
Let's say I have an internal data type, T a, that is used in the signature of exported functions:
module A (f, g) where
newtype T a = MkT { unT :: (Int, a) }
deriving (Functor, Show, Read) -- for internal use
f :: a -> IO (T a)
f a = fmap (\i -> T (i, a)) randomIO
g :: T a -> a
g = snd . unT
What is the effect of not exporting the type constructor T? Does it prevent consumers from meddling with values of type T a? In other words, is there a difference between the export list (f, g) and (f, g, T()) here?
Prevented
The first thing a consumer will see is that the type doesn't appear in Haddock documentation. In the documentation for f and g, the type Twill not be hyperlinked like an exported type. This may prevent a casual reader from discovering T's class instances.
More importantly, a consumer cannot doing anything with T at the type level. Anything that requires writing a type will be impossible. For instance, a consumer cannot write new class instances involving T, or include T in a type family. (I don't think there's a way around this...)
At the value level, however, the main limitation is that a consumer cannot write a type annotation including T:
> :t (f . read) :: Read b => String -> IO (A.T b)
<interactive>:1:39: Not in scope: type constructor or class `A.T'
Not prevented
The restriction on type signatures is not as significant a limitation as it appears. The compiler can still infer such a type:
> :t f . read
f . read :: Read b => String -> IO (A.T b)
Any value expression within the inferrable subset of Haskell may therefore be expressed regardless of the availability of the type constructor T. If, like me, you're addicted to ScopedTypeVariables and extensive annotations, you may be a little surprised by the definition of unT' below.
Furthermore, because typeclass instances have global scope, a consumer can use any available class functions without additional limitation. Depending on the classes involved, this may allow significant manipulation of values of the unexposed type. With classes like Functor, a consumer can also freely manipulate type parameters, because there's an available function of type T a -> T b.
In the example of T, deriving Show of course exposes the "internal" Int, and gives a consumer enough information to hackishly implement unT:
-- :: (Show a, Read a) => T a -> (Int, a)
unT' = (read . strip . show') `asTypeOf` (mkPair . g)
where
strip = reverse . drop 1 . reverse . drop 9
-- :: T a -> String
show' = show `asTypeOf` (mkString . g)
mkPair :: t -> (Int, t)
mkPair = undefined
mkString :: t -> String
mkString = undefined
> :t unT'
unT' :: (Show b, Read b) => A.T b -> (Int, b)
> x <- f "x"
> unT' x
(-29353, "x")
Implementing mkT' with the Read instance is left as an exercise.
Deriving something like Generic will completely explode any idea of containment, but you'd probably expect that.
Prevented?
In the corners of Haskell where type signatures are necessary or where asTypeOf-style tricks don't work, I guess not exporting the type constructor could actually prevent a consumer from doing something they could with the export list (f, g, T()).
Recommendation
Export all type constructors that are used in the type of any value you export. Here, go ahead and include T() in your export list. Leaving it out doesn't accomplish anything other than muddying the documentation. If you want to expose an purely abstract immutable type, use a newtype with a hidden constructor and no class instances.
here's my question:
this works perfectly:
type Asdf = [Integer]
type ListOfAsdf = [Asdf]
Now I want to do the same but with the Integral class restriction:
type Asdf2 a = (Integral a) => [a]
type ListOfAsdf2 = (Integral a) => [Asdf2 a]
I got this error:
Illegal polymorphic or qualified type: Asdf2 a
Perhaps you intended to use -XImpredicativeTypes
In the type synonym declaration for `ListOfAsdf2'
I have tried a lot of things but I am still not able to create a type with a class restriction as described above.
Thanks in advance!!! =)
Dak
Ranting Against the Anti-Existentionallists
I always dislike the anti-existential type talk in Haskell as I often find existentials useful. For example, in some quick check tests I have code similar to (ironically untested code follows):
data TestOp = forall a. Testable a => T String a
tests :: [TestOp]
tests = [T "propOne:" someProp1
,T "propTwo:" someProp2
]
runTests = mapM runTest tests
runTest (T s a) = putStr s >> quickCheck a
And even in a corner of some production code I found it handy to make a list of types I'd need random values of:
type R a = Gen -> (a,Gen)
data RGen = forall a. (Serialize a, Random a) => RGen (R a)
list = [(b1, str1, random :: RGen (random :: R Type1))
,(b2, str2, random :: RGen (random :: R Type2))
]
Answering Your Question
{-# LANGUAGE ExistentialQuantification #-}
data SomeWrapper = forall a. Integral a => SW a
If you need a context, the easiest way would be to use a data declaration:
data (Integral a) => IntegralData a = ID [a]
type ListOfIntegralData a = [IntegralData a]
*Main> :t [ ID [1234,1234]]
[ID [1234,1234]] :: Integral a => [IntegralData a]
This has the (sole) effect of making sure an Integral context is added to every function that uses the IntegralData data type.
sumID :: Integral a => IntegralData a -> a
sumID (ID xs) = sum xs
The main reason a type synonym isn't working for you is that type synonyms are designed as
just that - something that replaces a type, not a type signature.
But if you want to go existential the best way is with a GADT, because it handles all the quantification issues for you:
{-# LANGUAGE GADTs #-}
data IntegralGADT where
IG :: Integral a => [a] -> IntegralGADT
type ListOfIG = [ IntegralGADT ]
Because this is essentially an existential type, you can mix them up:
*Main> :t [IG [1,1,1::Int], IG [234,234::Integer]]
[IG [1,1,1::Int],IG [234,234::Integer]] :: [ IntegralGADT ]
Which you might find quite handy, depending on your application.
The main advantage of a GADT over a data declaration is that when you pattern match, you implicitly get the Integral context:
showPointZero :: IntegralGADT -> String
showPointZero (IG xs) = show $ (map fromIntegral xs :: [Double])
*Main> showPointZero (IG [1,2,3])
"[1.0,2.0,3.0]"
But existential quantification is sometimes used for the wrong reasons,
(eg wanting to mix all your data up in one list because that's what you're
used to from dynamically typed languages, and you haven't got used to
static typing and its advantages yet).
Here I think it's more trouble than it's worth, unless you need to mix different
Integral types together without converting them. I can't see a reason
why this would help, because you'll have to convert them when you use them.
For example, you can't define
unIG (IG xs) = xs
because it doesn't even type check. Rule of thumb: you can't do stuff that mentions the type a on the right hand side.
However, this is OK because we convert the type a:
unIG :: Num b => IntegralGADT -> [b]
unIG (IG xs) = map fromIntegral xs
Here existential quantification has forced you convert your data when I think your original plan was to not have to!
You may as well convert everything to Integer instead of this.
If you want things simple, keep them simple. The data declaration is the simplest way of ensuring you don't put data in your data type unless it's already a member of some type class.
When metaprogramming, it may be useful (or necessary) to pass along to Haskell's type system information about types that's known to your program but not inferable in Hindley-Milner. Is there a library (or language extension, etc) that provides facilities for doing this—that is, programmatic type annotations—in Haskell?
Consider a situation where you're working with a heterogenous list (implemented using the Data.Dynamic library or existential quantification, say) and you want to filter the list down to a bog-standard, homogeneously typed Haskell list. You can write a function like
import Data.Dynamic
import Data.Typeable
dynListToList :: (Typeable a) => [Dynamic] -> [a]
dynListToList = (map fromJust) . (filter isJust) . (map fromDynamic)
and call it with a manual type annotation. For example,
foo :: [Int]
foo = dynListToList [ toDyn (1 :: Int)
, toDyn (2 :: Int)
, toDyn ("foo" :: String) ]
Here foo is the list [1, 2] :: [Int]; that works fine and you're back on solid ground where Haskell's type system can do its thing.
Now imagine you want to do much the same thing but (a) at the time you write the code you don't know what the type of the list produced by a call to dynListToList needs to be, yet (b) your program does contain the information necessary to figure this out, only (c) it's not in a form accessible to the type system.
For example, say you've randomly selected an item from your heterogenous list and you want to filter the list down by that type. Using the type-checking facilities supplied by Data.Typeable, your program has all the information it needs to do this, but as far as I can tell—this is the essence of the question—there's no way to pass it along to the type system. Here's some pseudo-Haskell that shows what I mean:
import Data.Dynamic
import Data.Typeable
randList :: (Typeable a) => [Dynamic] -> IO [a]
randList dl = do
tr <- randItem $ map dynTypeRep dl
return (dynListToList dl :: [<tr>]) -- This thing should have the type
-- represented by `tr`
(Assume randItem selects a random item from a list.)
Without a type annotation on the argument of return, the compiler will tell you that it has an "ambiguous type" and ask you to provide one. But you can't provide a manual type annotation because the type is not known at write-time (and can vary); the type is known at run-time, however—albeit in a form the type system can't use (here, the type needed is represented by the value tr, a TypeRep—see Data.Typeable for details).
The pseudo-code :: [<tr>] is the magic I want to happen. Is there any way to provide the type system with type information programatically; that is, with type information contained in a value in your program?
Basically I'm looking for a function with (pseudo-) type ??? -> TypeRep -> a that takes a value of a type unknown to Haskell's type system and a TypeRep and says, "Trust me, compiler, I know what I'm doing. This thing has the value represented by this TypeRep." (Note that this is not what unsafeCoerce does.)
Or is there something completely different that gets me the same place? For example, I can imagine a language extension that permits assignment to type variables, like a souped-up version of the extension enabling scoped type variables.
(If this is impossible or highly impractical,—e.g., it requires packing a complete GHCi-like interpreter into the executable—please try to explain why.)
No, you can't do this. The long and short of it is that you're trying to write a dependently-typed function, and Haskell isn't a dependently typed language; you can't lift your TypeRep value to a true type, and so there's no way to write down the type of your desired function. To explain this in a little more detail, I'm first going to show why the way you've phrased the type of randList doesn't really make sense. Then, I'm going to explain why you can't do what you want. Finally, I'll briefly mention a couple thoughts on what to actually do.
Existentials
Your type signature for randList can't mean what you want it to mean. Remembering that all type variables in Haskell are universally quantified, it reads
randList :: forall a. Typeable a => [Dynamic] -> IO [a]
Thus, I'm entitled to call it as, say, randList dyns :: IO [Int] anywhere I want; I must be able to provide a return value for all a, not simply for some a. Thinking of this as a game, it's one where the caller can pick a, not the function itself. What you want to say (this isn't valid Haskell syntax, although you can translate it into valid Haskell by using an existential data type1) is something more like
randList :: [Dynamic] -> (exists a. Typeable a => IO [a])
This promises that the elements of the list are of some type a, which is an instance of Typeable, but not necessarily any such type. But even with this, you'll have two problems. First, even if you could construct such a list, what could you do with it? And second, it turns out that you can't even construct it in the first place.
Since all that you know about the elements of the existential list is that they're instances of Typeable, what can you do with them? Looking at the documentation, we see that there are only two functions2 which take instances of Typeable:
typeOf :: Typeable a => a -> TypeRep, from the type class itself (indeed, the only method therein); and
cast :: (Typeable a, Typeable b) => a -> Maybe b (which is implemented with unsafeCoerce, and couldn't be written otherwise).
Thus, all that you know about the type of the elements in the list is that you can call typeOf and cast on them. Since we'll never be able to usefully do anything else with them, our existential might just as well be (again, not valid Haskell)
randList :: [Dynamic] -> IO [(TypeRep, forall b. Typeable b => Maybe b)]
This is what we get if we apply typeOf and cast to every element of our list, store the results, and throw away the now-useless existentially typed original value. Clearly, the TypeRep part of this list isn't useful. And the second half of the list isn't either. Since we're back to a universally-quantified type, the caller of randList is once again entitled to request that they get a Maybe Int, a Maybe Bool, or a Maybe b for any (typeable) b of their choosing. (In fact, they have slightly more power than before, since they can instantiate different elements of the list to different types.) But they can't figure out what type they're converting from unless they already know it—you've still lost the type information you were trying to keep.
And even setting aside the fact that they're not useful, you simply can't construct the desired existential type here. The error arises when you try to return the existentially-typed list (return $ dynListToList dl). At what specific type are you calling dynListToList? Recall that dynListToList :: forall a. Typeable a => [Dynamic] -> [a]; thus, randList is responsible for picking which a dynListToList is going to use. But it doesn't know which a to pick; again, that's the source of the question! So the type that you're trying to return is underspecified, and thus ambiguous.3
Dependent types
OK, so what would make this existential useful (and possible)? Well, we actually have slightly more information: not only do we know there's some a, we have its TypeRep. So maybe we can package that up:
randList :: [Dynamic] -> (exists a. Typeable a => IO (TypeRep,[a]))
This isn't quite good enough, though; the TypeRep and the [a] aren't linked at all. And that's exactly what you're trying to express: some way to link the TypeRep and the a.
Basically, your goal is to write something like
toType :: TypeRep -> *
Here, * is the kind of all types; if you haven't seen kinds before, they are to types what types are to values. * classifies types, * -> * classifies one-argument type constructors, etc. (For instance, Int :: *, Maybe :: * -> *, Either :: * -> * -> *, and Maybe Int :: *.)
With this, you could write (once again, this code isn't valid Haskell; in fact, it really bears only a passing resemblance to Haskell, as there's no way you could write it or anything like it within Haskell's type system):
randList :: [Dynamic] -> (exists (tr :: TypeRep).
Typeable (toType tr) => IO (tr, [toType tr]))
randList dl = do
tr <- randItem $ map dynTypeRep dl
return (tr, dynListToList dl :: [toType tr])
-- In fact, in an ideal world, the `:: [toType tr]` signature would be
-- inferable.
Now, you're promising the right thing: not that there exists some type which classifies the elements of the list, but that there exists some TypeRep such that its corresponding type classifies the elements of the list. If only you could do this, you would be set. But writing toType :: TypeRep -> * is completely impossible in Haskell: doing this requires a dependently-typed language, since toType tr is a type which depends on a value.
What does this mean? In Haskell, it's perfectly acceptable for values to depend on other values; this is what a function is. The value head "abc", for instance, depends on the value "abc". Similarly, we have type constructors, so it's acceptable for types to depend on other types; consider Maybe Int, and how it depends on Int. We can even have values which depend on types! Consider id :: a -> a. This is really a family of functions: id_Int :: Int -> Int, id_Bool :: Bool -> Bool, etc. Which one we have depends on the type of a. (So really, id = \(a :: *) (x :: a) -> x; although we can't write this in Haskell, there are languages where we can.)
Crucially, however, we can never have a type that depends on a value. We might want such a thing: imagine Vec 7 Int, the type of length-7 lists of integers. Here, Vec :: Nat -> * -> *: a type whose first argument must be a value of type Nat. But we can't write this sort of thing in Haskell.4 Languages which support this are called dependently-typed (and will let us write id as we did above); examples include Coq and Agda. (Such languages often double as proof assistants, and are generally used for research work as opposed to writing actual code. Dependent types are hard, and making them useful for everyday programming is an active area of research.)
Thus, in Haskell, we can check everything about our types first, throw away all that information, and then compile something that refers only to values. In fact, this is exactly what GHC does; since we can never check types at run-time in Haskell, GHC erases all the types at compile-time without changing the program's run-time behavior. This is why unsafeCoerce is easy to implement (operationally) and completely unsafe: at run-time, it's a no-op, but it lies to the type system. Consequently, something like toType is completely impossible to implement in the Haskell type system.
In fact, as you noticed, you can't even write down the desired type and use unsafeCoerce. For some problems, you can get away with this; we can write down the type for the function, but only implement it with by cheating. That's exactly how fromDynamic works. But as we saw above, there's not even a good type to give to this problem from within Haskell. The imaginary toType function allows you to give the program a type, but you can't even write down toType's type!
What now?
So, you can't do this. What should you do? My guess is that your overall architecture isn't ideal for Haskell, although I haven't seen it; Typeable and Dynamic don't actually show up that much in Haskell programs. (Perhaps you're "speaking Haskell with a Python accent", as they say.) If you only have a finite set of data types to deal with, you might be able to bundle things into a plain old algebraic data type instead:
data MyType = MTInt Int | MTBool Bool | MTString String
Then you can write isMTInt, and just use filter isMTInt, or filter (isSameMTAs randomMT).
Although I don't know what it is, there's probably a way you could unsafeCoerce your way through this problem. But frankly, that's not a good idea unless you really, really, really, really, really, really know what you're doing. And even then, it's probably not. If you need unsafeCoerce, you'll know, it won't just be a convenience thing.
I really agree with Daniel Wagner's comment: you're probably going to want to rethink your approach from scratch. Again, though, since I haven't seen your architecture, I can't say what that will mean. Maybe there's another Stack Overflow question in there, if you can distill out a concrete difficulty.
1 That looks like the following:
{-# LANGUAGE ExistentialQuantification #-}
data TypeableList = forall a. Typeable a => TypeableList [a]
randList :: [Dynamic] -> IO TypeableList
However, since none of this code compiles anyway, I think writing it out with exists is clearer.
2 Technically, there are some other functions which look relevant, such as toDyn :: Typeable a => a -> Dynamic and fromDyn :: Typeable a => Dynamic -> a -> a. However, Dynamic is more or less an existential wrapper around Typeables, relying on typeOf and TypeReps to know when to unsafeCoerce (GHC uses some implementation-specific types and unsafeCoerce, but you could do it this way, with the possible exception of dynApply/dynApp), so toDyn doesn't do anything new. And fromDyn doesn't really expect its argument of type a; it's just a wrapper around cast. These functions, and the other similar ones, don't provide any extra power that isn't available with just typeOf and cast. (For instance, going back to a Dynamic isn't very useful for your problem!)
3 To see the error in action, you can try to compile the following complete Haskell program:
{-# LANGUAGE ExistentialQuantification #-}
import Data.Dynamic
import Data.Typeable
import Data.Maybe
randItem :: [a] -> IO a
randItem = return . head -- Good enough for a short and non-compiling example
dynListToList :: Typeable a => [Dynamic] -> [a]
dynListToList = mapMaybe fromDynamic
data TypeableList = forall a. Typeable a => TypeableList [a]
randList :: [Dynamic] -> IO TypeableList
randList dl = do
tr <- randItem $ map dynTypeRep dl
return . TypeableList $ dynListToList dl -- Error! Ambiguous type variable.
Sure enough, if you try to compile this, you get the error:
SO12273982.hs:17:27:
Ambiguous type variable `a0' in the constraint:
(Typeable a0) arising from a use of `dynListToList'
Probable fix: add a type signature that fixes these type variable(s)
In the second argument of `($)', namely `dynListToList dl'
In a stmt of a 'do' block: return . TypeableList $ dynListToList dl
In the expression:
do { tr <- randItem $ map dynTypeRep dl;
return . TypeableList $ dynListToList dl }
But as is the entire point of the question, you can't "add a type signature that fixes these type variable(s)", because you don't know what type you want.
4 Mostly. GHC 7.4 has support for lifting types to kinds and for kind polymorphism; see section 7.8, "Kind polymorphism and promotion", in the GHC 7.4 user manual. This doesn't make Haskell dependently typed—something like TypeRep -> * example is still out5—but you will be able to write Vec by using very expressive types that look like values.
5 Technically, you could now write down something which looks like it has the desired type: type family ToType :: TypeRep -> *. However, this takes a type of the promoted kind TypeRep, and not a value of the type TypeRep; and besides, you still wouldn't be able to implement it. (At least I don't think so, and I can't see how you would—but I am not an expert in this.) But at this point, we're pretty far afield.
What you're observing is that the type TypeRep doesn't actually carry any type-level information along with it; only term-level information. This is a shame, but we can do better when we know all the type constructors we care about. For example, suppose we only care about Ints, lists, and function types.
{-# LANGUAGE GADTs, TypeOperators #-}
import Control.Monad
data a :=: b where Refl :: a :=: a
data Dynamic where Dynamic :: TypeRep a -> a -> Dynamic
data TypeRep a where
Int :: TypeRep Int
List :: TypeRep a -> TypeRep [a]
Arrow :: TypeRep a -> TypeRep b -> TypeRep (a -> b)
class Typeable a where typeOf :: TypeRep a
instance Typeable Int where typeOf = Int
instance Typeable a => Typeable [a] where typeOf = List typeOf
instance (Typeable a, Typeable b) => Typeable (a -> b) where
typeOf = Arrow typeOf typeOf
congArrow :: from :=: from' -> to :=: to' -> (from -> to) :=: (from' -> to')
congArrow Refl Refl = Refl
congList :: a :=: b -> [a] :=: [b]
congList Refl = Refl
eq :: TypeRep a -> TypeRep b -> Maybe (a :=: b)
eq Int Int = Just Refl
eq (Arrow from to) (Arrow from' to') = liftM2 congArrow (eq from from') (eq to to')
eq (List t) (List t') = liftM congList (eq t t')
eq _ _ = Nothing
eqTypeable :: (Typeable a, Typeable b) => Maybe (a :=: b)
eqTypeable = eq typeOf typeOf
toDynamic :: Typeable a => a -> Dynamic
toDynamic a = Dynamic typeOf a
-- look ma, no unsafeCoerce!
fromDynamic_ :: TypeRep a -> Dynamic -> Maybe a
fromDynamic_ rep (Dynamic rep' a) = case eq rep rep' of
Just Refl -> Just a
Nothing -> Nothing
fromDynamic :: Typeable a => Dynamic -> Maybe a
fromDynamic = fromDynamic_ typeOf
All of the above is pretty standard. For more on the design strategy, you'll want to read about GADTs and singleton types. Now, the function you want to write follows; the type is going to look a bit daft, but bear with me.
-- extract only the elements of the list whose type match the head
firstOnly :: [Dynamic] -> Dynamic
firstOnly [] = Dynamic (List Int) []
firstOnly (Dynamic rep v:xs) = Dynamic (List rep) (v:go xs) where
go [] = []
go (Dynamic rep' v:xs) = case eq rep rep' of
Just Refl -> v : go xs
Nothing -> go xs
Here we've picked a random element (I rolled a die, and it came up 1) and extracted only the elements that have a matching type from the list of dynamic values. Now, we could have done the same thing with regular boring old Dynamic from the standard libraries; however, what we couldn't have done is used the TypeRep in a meaningful way. I now demonstrate that we can do so: we'll pattern match on the TypeRep, and then use the enclosed value at the specific type the TypeRep tells us it is.
use :: Dynamic -> [Int]
use (Dynamic (List (Arrow Int Int)) fs) = zipWith ($) fs [1..]
use (Dynamic (List Int) vs) = vs
use (Dynamic Int v) = [v]
use (Dynamic (Arrow (List Int) (List (List Int))) f) = concat (f [0..5])
use _ = []
Note that on the right-hand sides of these equations, we are using the wrapped value at different, concrete types; the pattern match on the TypeRep is actually introducing type-level information.
You want a function that chooses a different type of values to return based on runtime data. Okay, great. But the whole purpose of a type is to tell you what operations can be performed on a value. When you don't know what type will be returned from a function, what do you do with the values it returns? What operations can you perform on them? There are two options:
You want to read the type, and perform some behaviour based on which type it is. In this case you can only cater for a finite list of types known in advance, essentially by testing "is it this type? then we do this operation...". This is easily possible in the current Dynamic framework: just return the Dynamic objects, using dynTypeRep to filter them, and leave the application of fromDynamic to whoever wants to consume your result. Moreover, it could well be possible without Dynamic, if you don't mind setting the finite list of types in your producer code, rather than your consumer code: just use an ADT with a constructor for each type, data Thing = Thing1 Int | Thing2 String | Thing3 (Thing,Thing). This latter option is by far the best if it is possible.
You want to perform some operation that works across a family of types, potentially some of which you don't know about yet, e.g. by using type class operations. This is trickier, and it's tricky conceptually too, because your program is not allowed to change behaviour based on whether or not some type class instance exists – it's an important property of the type class system that the introduction of a new instance can either make a program type check or stop it from type checking, but it can't change the behaviour of a program. Hence you can't throw an error if your input list contains inappropriate types, so I'm really not sure that there's anything you can do that doesn't essentially involve falling back to the first solution at some point.