24 Days of GHC Extensions: Type Families

Today, we’re going to look at an extension that radically alters the behavior of GHC Haskell by extending what we can do with types. The extension that we’re looking at is known as type families, and it has a wide variety of applications.

{-# LANGUAGE FlexibleContexts #-} {-# LANGUAGE TypeFamilies #-} import Control.Concurrent.STM import Control.Concurrent.MVar import Data.Foldable (forM_) (forM_) import Data.IORef

As the extension is so large, we’re only going to touch the surface of the capabilities - though this extension is well documented, so there’s plenty of extra reading for those who are interested!

Associated Types

To begin, lets look at the interaction of type families and type classes. In ordinary Haskell, a type class can associate a set of methods with a type. The type families extension will now allow us to associate types with a type.

As an example, lets try and abstract over the various mutable stores that we have available in Haskell. In the IO monad, we can use IORef s and MVar s to store data, whereas other monads have their own specific stores, as we’ll soon see. To begin with, we’ll start with a class over the different types of store:

class IOStore store where store newIO :: a -> IO (store a) (store a) getIO :: store a -> IO a store a putIO :: store a -> a -> IO () store a()

This works fine for IO stores: we can add an instance for MVar …

instance IOStore MVar where = newMVar newIOnewMVar = readMVar getIOreadMVar = modifyMVar_ mvar ( return . const a) putIO mvar amodifyMVar_ mvar (a)

and an instance for IORef :

instance IOStore IORef where = newIORef newIOnewIORef = readIORef getIOreadIORef = modifyIORef ioref ( const a) putIO ioref amodifyIORef ioref (a)

Now we have the ability to write functions that are polymorphic over stores:

type Present = String storePresentsIO :: IOStore store => [ Present ] -> IO (store [ Present ]) store(store []) = do storePresentsIO xs <- newIO [] storenewIO [] $ \x -> do forM_ xs\x <- getIO store oldgetIO store : old) putIO store (xold) return store store

While this example is obviously contrived, hopefully you can see how we are able to interact with a memory store without choosing which store we are commiting to. We can use this by choosing the type we need, as the following GHCI session illustrates:

.> s <- storePresentsIO ["Category Theory Books"] :: IO (IORef [Present]) .> :t s s :: IORef [Present] .> get s ["Category Theory Books"]

Cool - now we can go and extend this to TVar and other STM cells! Ack… there is a problem. Reviewing our IOStore type class, we can see that we’ve commited to working in the IO monad - and that’s a shame. What we’d like to be able to do is associate the type of monad with the type of store we’re using - as knowing the store tells us the monad that we have to work in.

To use type families, we use the type keyword within the class definition, and specify the kind of the type:

class Store store where store type StoreMonad store :: * -> * new :: a -> ( StoreMonad store) (store a) store) (store a) get :: store a -> ( StoreMonad store) a store astore) a put :: store a -> a -> ( StoreMonad store) () store astore) ()

As you can see, the types of the methods in the type class has become a little more complicated. Rather than working in the IO monad, we calculate the monad by using the StoreMonad type family.

The instances are similar to what we saw before, but we also have to provide the necessary type of monad:

instance Store IORef where type StoreMonad IORef = IO = newIORef newnewIORef = readIORef getreadIORef = modifyIORef ioref ( const a) put ioref amodifyIORef ioref (a) instance Store TVar where type StoreMonad TVar = STM = newTVar newnewTVar = readTVar getreadTVar = modifyTVar ioref ( const a) put ioref amodifyTVar ioref (a)

As you can see - our methods don’t need to change at all; type families naturally extend the existing type class functionality. Our original storePresentsIO can now be made to work in any monad, with only a change to the type:

storePresents :: ( Store store, Monad ( StoreMonad store)) store,store)) => [ Present ] -> ( StoreMonad store) (store [ Present ]) store) (store []) = do storePresents xs <- new [] storenew [] $ \x -> do forM_ xs\x <- get store oldget store : old) put store (xold) return store store

As we have an instance for Store TVar , we can now use this directly in an STM transaction:

.> atomically (do (storePresents ["Distributed Computing Through Combinatorial Topology"] :: STM (TVar [Present])) >>= get) ["Distributed Computing Through Combinatorial Topology"]

Awesome!

Type Families and Computation

What we’ve seen so far is extremely useful, but the fun needn’t stop there! Type families also give us the ability to compute over types! Traditionally, Haskell is built around value level computation - running programs should do something. That said, we all know how useful it is to have functions - so why can’t we have them at the type level? Well, now that we have the ability to associate types with types, we can!

To look at this new functionality (closed type families), we need a few more extensions to really unlock the potential here, so I’ll finish this blog post on that cliff hanger. Watch this space!

This post is part of 24 Days of GHC Extensions - for more posts like this, check out the calendar.

You can contact me via email at ollie@ocharles.org.uk or tweet to me @acid2. I share almost all of my work at GitHub. This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.