lens over tea #5: prisms

The exploration of lenses continues! Today we’ll finally figure out how prisms are implemented and what they are for. Also there are more exercises than in the previous posts, so perhaps you should read it with GHCi running (and not on your phone).

A recap of isomorphisms

Okay, I wrote the last post like 5 months ago and I forgot a lot since then and you probably forgot everything too, so first there’ll be a short recap of isomorphisms (which I don’t recommend skipping because it has drawings of boxes, which I’ll also be using when talking about prisms).

An isomorphism is a thing that lets you convert s to a and vice-versa:

type Iso s t a b = s t a b forall p f . ( Profunctor p, Functor f) => p fp,f) -> p s (f t) p a (f b)p s (f t) iso :: (s -> a) -> (b -> t) -> Iso s t a b (sa)(bt)s t a b from :: Iso s t a b -> Iso b a t s s t a bb a t s

You can use an Iso as a lens (to get a from s ), or you can reverse it with from and use it as a wrapper (to get s from a ).

Well, actually you’re getting t from b , and not s from a , but all Iso s have to be polymorphic enough for it not to matter; that is, you should be able to turn s into t and a into b just by renaming type variables. Here’s an example showing how _1 is polymorphic in this way:

_1 :: Lens (a, x) (b, x) a b (a, x) (b, x) a b _1 :: Lens (b, x) (a, x) b a -- the same thing! (b, x) (a, x) b a

(This all is explained in greater detail here.)

Okay, but what are profunctors? Again, this was explained in the previous post:

The point of profunctors is that if you’re given a p a b , you can treat it as an opaque “black box”, some kind of relationship between a and b – you can add a filter to the black box which would modify its output, and you can add another filter which would modify its input, but you can’t modify the black box itself in any way and you can’t inspect the input in any way (because, after all, there might not even be any) or get any information from one filter to another.

class Profunctor p where -- Attach a function to the input. lmap :: (a -> b) -> p b c -> p a c (ab)p b cp a c -- Attach a function to the output. rmap :: (b -> c) -> p a b -> p a c (bc)p a bp a c

This is a -> b (from now on I’ll be referring to profunctors as boxes):

x-----------x | | |_____)_____| aaaaaa)bbbbbb |‾‾‾‾‾)‾‾‾‾‾| | | x-----------x

This is what applications of lmap and rmap do:

x-----------x _____| |_____ | ) |_____)_____| ) | sss)aaaaaaaa)bbbbbbbb)ttt | ) |‾‾‾‾‾)‾‾‾‾‾| ) | ‾‾‾‾‾| |‾‾‾‾‾ x-----------x

Now: an iso can convert p a (f b) to p s (f t) , for any p . And p is a profunctor. And the only thing you can do with an arbitrary profunctor is attach a function to its input or output (or both). So, in order for an iso to work, it must contain functions s -> a and f b -> f t in it, and f b -> f t can be converted to b -> t :

type FBT b t = forall f . Functor f => f b -> f t b tf bf t convert :: FBT b t -> (b -> t) b t(bt) = runIdentity convert fbtrunIdentity . ( fbt :: Identity b -> Identity t) t) . Identity

Getting s -> a

To invert an iso, you have to be able to get s -> a and b -> t out of it. The only thing we can do is give the iso some box of form p a (f b) ; to get s -> a , let’s give it a box that memorises applications of lmap . I mean this:

x-----------x | | |___________| aaaaaa| |‾‾‾|a|‾‾‾‾‾| | |aaaaaaaa x-----------x

(It doesn’t have any official output, but it has its input flowing out of it via a hidden pipe.)

After lmap it would look like this:

x-----------x _____| | | ) |___________| sss)aaaaaaaa| | ) |‾‾‾|a|‾‾‾‾‾| ‾‾‾‾‾| |aaaaaaaa x-----------x

So, we’ll give this box to the iso, the iso would apply s -> a to it, and we would have an s -> a pipe at our disposal.

Here’s the same thing but without pictures:

lmap :: (s -> a) -> p a (f b) -> p s (f b) (sa)p a (f b)p s (f b)

The result, p s (f b) , has to hold s -> a somewhere and can ignore (f b) . Our box, Foo , shall look as follows:

-- “s” = input -- “a” = output via hidden pipe -- “x” = official output (which can be anything 'cause there's no output) data Foo a s x = Foo (s -> a) a s x(sa) unFoo :: Foo a s x -> (s -> a) a s x(sa)

Replacing p with Foo a makes lmap look like this:

lmap :: (s -> a) -> Foo a a (f b) -> Foo a s (f b) (sa)a a (f b)a s (f b)

We can get Foo a a (f b) by wrapping id into Foo , and we can get s -> a out of Foo a s (f b) by using unFoo . Cool.

Foo is actually called Forget , by the way.

Getting b -> t

To get b -> t , we can take a b , make a box that outputs b , and the iso would turn it into a box that outputs t . This wouldn’t even require any hidden pipes:

x-----------x | |_____ |___________| ) | |bbbbbbbb)ttt |‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾| ) | | |‾‾‾‾‾ x-----------x

-- “b” = output -- “x” = official input (which can be anything 'cause there's no input) data Bar x b = Bar b x b unBar :: Bar x b -> b x b

rmap :: (f b -> f t) -> Bar x (f b) -> Bar x (f t) (f bf t)x (f b)x (f t)

The actual name of Bar is Tagged .

Note that here we have to know b in order to even create the box that would be given to rmap . So, to extract b -> t out of an Iso , we do this:

bt :: Iso s t a b -> (b -> t) s t a b(bt) = \b -> runIdentity . unTagged $ i ( Tagged ( Identity b)) bt i\brunIdentityunTaggedi (b)) -- In pseudocode: -- -- bt i = \b -> unwrapBox (i (makeBox b))

( Identity is needed because Iso deals with f b and not b .)

We could just as well get b -> t directly using this box:

x-----------x bbbbbbbb| |_____ |_____|b|___| ) | |bbbbbbbb)ttt |‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾| ) | | |‾‾‾‾‾ x-----------x

-- In pseudocode: -- -- bt i = unwrapBox (i (makeBox id))

Getting both things in one go

To get both things in one go, we can take this box (which is called Exchange in lens):

data Exchange a b s t = Exchange (s -> a) (b -> t) a b s t(sa) (bt)

x-----------x bbbbbbbb| | |_____|b|___| aaaaaa|bbbbbb |‾‾‾|a|‾‾‾‾‾| | |aaaaaaaa x-----------x

which the iso would turn into this box:

x-----------x _____bbbbbbbb| |_____ | ) |_____|b|___| ) | sss)aaaaaaaa|bbbbbbbb)ttt | ) |‾‾‾|a|‾‾‾‾‾| ) | ‾‾‾‾‾| |aaaaaaaa‾‾‾‾‾ x-----------x

and from which we’d extract s -> a and b -> t :

_____ x-----------x | ) |_____ bbbbbbbb| |_____ sss)aaaaaaaa| ‾‾‾‾‾‾|b|___| ) | | ) |‾‾‾|a|‾‾‾‾‾| |bbbbbbbb)ttt ‾‾‾‾‾| |aaaaaaaa ‾‾‾‾‾| ) | x-----------x ‾‾‾‾‾

Exercises

Pictures are fun and all, but do the following things:

look up dimap and understand what it does

and understand what it does write an instance of Profunctor for ->

for write iso :: (s -> a) -> (b -> t) -> Iso s t a b

write an instance of Profunctor for Forget

for write an instance of Profunctor for Tagged

for write an instance of Profunctor for Exchange

for write from :: Iso s t a b -> Iso b a t s using Exchange

Okay, and now let’s move on to prisms.

Affine traversals

Or, well, let’s not. I just found out that I had written a small section about affine traversals back when the plan for this post was:

“A wrong way to approach prisms (involving affine traversals)”

“Isomorphisms”

“The right way to approach prisms”

And then the post grew and grew and I decided to split off isomorphisms into their own part. Anyway, affine traversals are something that is not in lens (and might never be in lens), but this hasn’t stopped me from writing about them, so here goes.

An affine traversal (or a 0-or-1 traversal) is a traversal that always extracts either nothing or a single value. (By the way, traversals that always return 1 or more values are called relevant traversals, and lenses may be called linear traversals.) If you remember, in post #3 we modified a Traversal to get Traversal1 (which always traversed 1 or more element). I’ll remind you how it was done:

Traversal has an Applicative constraint

has an constraint Applicative provides pure and <*>

provides and pure is like mempty (it lets you create actions which have no effects)

is like (it lets you create actions which have no effects) <*> is like <> (it lets you combine effects from 2 actions)

is like (it lets you combine effects from 2 actions) when pure is removed, the traversal can no longer do nothing

is removed, the traversal can no longer do nothing to remove pure , we used the Apply typeclass, which is just like Applicative but without pure

So, the “0” part comes from pure , the “+” part comes from <*> , and the “1” part (i.e. returning at least 1 value) comes from the a -> f b function we give to the traversal. If we remove pure , we can’t have “0”. From this follows that if we remove <*> , we’ll lose “+”, which is exactly what we want.

(No, really, is this clear to you? It might not be, because I only got it after thinking about it for 5m and I’m the one who is actually writing the posts (but on the other hand maybe I just have really bad memory), so… Okay, whatever. We give the traversal an a -> f b function (which actually just stores a in f b ). The traversal applies this function to all the elements it wants to return. Then it combines the results with <*> , which also combines “effects” to return several stored a s instead of just 1. If the traversal doesn’t want to return anything, it still can use pure to get an f t back. Now, if we don’t let the traversal use <*> , it won’t be able to combine those f b s, and so we’ll get at most 1 a .)

I don’t know how to google for “ pure without <*> ”, but I knew that there was such a class somewhere, and then I was just reading unrelated stuff and completely accidentally stumbled upon Pointed , which is just what we need. (But if I hadn’t found it, I would’ve asked on #haskell or #haskell-lens, so it’s not like this depended much on pure luck. I hate things that depend on pure luck.)

Pointed is a class with a single operation – point , which… well, lifts a value into something. It’s not really useful for anything because for everyday programming pure and return are alright (not to mention that most people prefer being more explicit and writing e.g. Just [] instead of pure [] ), and it’s not suitable for writing more generic functions either because it’s got no laws. (Here’s a typical jump-all-over-the-place-but-still-nice comment from Edward about Pointed .)

With Pointed , we can give this definition for Traversal01 :

type Traversal01 s t a b = s t a b forall f . ( Functor f, Pointed f) => (a -> f b) -> s -> f t f,f)(af b)f t

Prisms

I like this description of prisms Edward Kmett wrote somewhere recently and I can’t be bothered to google where exactly okay fine I will. Here. (In case you’re wondering, Tony is being sarcastic in the next comment. I think.)

A lens describes something isomorphic to a product with some extra context. A lens from s to a indicates there exists c such that s is isomorphic to (c, a) . On the other hand, a prism from s to a indicates there exists c such that s is isomorphic to (Either c a) .

In other words, lenses deconstruct product types and prisms deconstruct sum types.

Here’s a longer explanation!

If you have a lens, you have get and put :

get :: s -> a put :: s -> a -> s

You can combine these into 1 function:

lens :: s -> (a, a -> s) (a, as)

lens breaks s into 2 values – a and something of type a -> s . Conceptually, you can say that a -> s is “ s with an a -shaped hole” – it contains all information needed to construct s , apart from a . You can also combine a and a -> s to get s back. Unless you violate lens laws, (a, a -> s) is isomorphic to just s .

What about prisms? They’re the same, but instead of deconstructing product types (e.g. tuples) they deconstruct sum types (i.e. something like Either ). With a prism, you get these 2 operations:

get :: s -> Maybe a put :: a -> s

This still doesn’t sound clear to me, so I’ll give a concrete example.

Let’s say you have a type for integers – Integer . You can say that every integer is either a natural number, 0, or a negated natural number (assuming that naturals start from 1). So, while it’s not actually represented like this, conceptually you could say that this is the definition of Integer :

data Integer = Positive Natural | Zero | Negative Natural

This is a sum type. You can’t deconstruct it with tuples, but you can deconstruct it with Either (where () shall denote Zero ):

type Integer = Either Natural ( Either Natural ()) ())

In other words, “not every integer contains a positive number, but some integers are positive numbers”.

Now, a prism is something that lets you maybe get a positive number out of an integer (if it’s there), and it also lets you “embed” a positive number into an integer:

prism :: ( Integer -> Maybe Natural , Natural -> Integer )

Of course, Integer doesn’t have to be an actual sum type for that, we can just pretend it is and use some if s and stuff:

= (toNatural, toInteger ) prism(toNatural, where = if n > 0 then Just ( fromInteger n) else Nothing toNatural nn)

(Did you know that GHC now has a type for naturals, by the way?)

(Also, have you noticed that get :: s -> Maybe a means that every prism is an affine traversal?)

(Also also, have you noticed that prisms are almost like isomorphisms? Except that isomorphisms always work in both directions, and prisms always work in one direction but can fail in the other direction – so, they could be called partial isomorphisms.)

Simple and not-simple prisms

We have simple lenses (ones that don’t change the type) and not-simple lenses (ones that can change the type). Can we have not-simple prisms?

A simple prism is something like this:

natural :: Prism' Integer Natural

It can be represented as a pair of functions:

getNatural :: Integer -> Maybe Natural putNatural :: Natural -> Integer

The key to not-simple prisms is noticing the fact that with get* and put* you can write modify* (which would modify the integer if and only if it’s a natural number):

modifyNatural :: ( Natural -> Natural ) -> Integer -> Integer = case getNatural int of modifyNatural f intgetNatural int Nothing -> int int Just nat -> putNatural (f nat) natputNatural (f nat)

Thus, with a not-simple prism…

_Left :: Prism ( Either a c) ( Either b c) a b a c) (b c) a b

you ought to be able to write this type-changing modifyLeft :

modifyLeft :: (a -> b) -> Either a c -> Either b c (ab)a cb c

Can we write it using a version of get* and put* ? Look at the definition for modifyNatural , and notice where and how it would fail if it was rewritten for _Left . Have you noticed?

(This wasn’t an exercise really, it was more like “hey, are you here? are you reading? do you know that if you can’t answer this question, you probably won’t understand later stuff, so maybe you should reread a bit or something?”.)

(On the other hand, you still should try to answer this question before reading further. Spend 2 minutes on it – by the clock – and if you still don’t know, keep reading.)

The answer is that it would fail in the Nothing branch. We have Either a c ; we know that it’s actually just c . So, we should be able to return it as Either b c , but we can’t, because the original value we have is still of type Either a c .

How to fix it? Well, we can add the type-changing behavior to our get* function:

currently get* returns either “yep, here’s the extracted value” or “couldn’t extract anything, just take the old value since you have it already”

a better get* would return either “yep, here’s the extracted value” or “couldn’t extract anything, which means that I can safely change the type to match what you want”

For getLeft , it means that it would return either a (if it could be extracted) or Either b c (if it couldn’t), because if it couldn’t it means that our Either a c was just c and so we can coerce it to any Either x c because, c’mon, it’s just c , no, seriously— ahem.

getLeft :: Either a c -> Either ( Either b c) a a cb c) a putLeft :: b -> Either b c b c modifyLeft :: (a -> b) -> Either a c -> Either b c (ab)a cb c = case getLeft ac of modifyLeft f acgetLeft ac Left bc -> bc bcbc Right a -> putLeft (f a) putLeft (f a)

Yay. Now let’s generalise everything!

A general prism:

type Prism s t a b = ... s t a b

A simple prism:

type Prism' s a = Prism s s a a s as s a a

A function to make a general prism from a setter and a getter:

prism :: (b -> t) -> (s -> Either t a) -> Prism s t a b (bt)(st a)s t a b

A function to make a simple prism from a setter and a getter:

prism' :: (a -> s) -> (s -> Maybe a) -> Prism' s a (as)(sa)s a

Fitting prisms into the lens framework

Okay, now, we have this cool type template ... => (a -> f b) -> (s -> f t) and we want to somehow fit prisms into this type so that they would combine with everything else, and the only thing we can actually choose is what constraints we put on f . If you have chosen the constraints right, you should be able to write review :

review :: Prism' s a -> a -> s s a

as well as prism :

prism :: (b -> t) -> (s -> Either t a) -> Prism s t a b (bt)(st a)s t a b

and don’t forget that ^? should work as well:

(^?) :: s -> Getting ( First a) s a -> Maybe a a) s a (^?) :: s -> Prism' s a -> Maybe a s a

Any ideas?

Actually, this is impossible. Look at the type again:

type Prism s t a b = s t a b ... => (a -> f b) -> (s -> f t) (af b)(sf t)

The whole point of review is to get us an s , but the prism produces a function that takes an s . Where’d we get it?

It’s not enough to put constraints on f ; we need to use profunctors. (Which makes sense, by the way – if we used profunctors for isomorphisms, and prisms are almost like isomorphisms, we’d need something like profunctors for prisms too.)

Okay, let’s try drawing prisms with boxes.

type Prism s t a b = s t a b ... => p a (f b) -> p s (f t) p a (f b)p s (f t)

A prism takes an a -> b box, and turns it into an s -> t box. (Again, I’m ignoring f for now.) The s -> t box operates like this:

x-----------x _______| |_____ _______ | |_____)_____| ) | | sss///aaaaaaaa)bbbbbbbb)ttttt\\\ttt | |t| |‾‾‾‾‾)‾‾‾‾‾| ) | |t| | ‾‾|t|‾‾| |‾‾‾‾‾ ‾‾|t|‾‾ |t| x-----------x |t| |t|_______________________|t| |ttttttttttttttttttttttttttt| ‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾

It takes an s and looks at it. If the s is actually an a , great, this is the isomorphism case – a goes into the box, b gets out, b is turned into t , the end. If the s isn’t an a , it’s a t – and the t bypasses the box altogether and just becomes the output of the whole mechanism.

So, a prism adds 2 parts to the original a -> b box:

an output filter that turns b into t

into a mechanism that lets us bypass the box

We already know how to do the first thing – just use rmap . The second thing is new; we could write it like this:

class Bypass p where bypass :: (s -> Either a t) -> p a t -> p s t (sa t)p a tp s t

This would give us the following constraints on Prism :

type Prism s t a b = s t a b ( Profunctor p, Bypass p, Applicative f) => p a (f b) -> p s (f t) p,p,f)p a (f b)p s (f t)

(Why Applicative and not Functor ? Because we’d need to be able to turn t into f t in case we do the bypass, and Applicative provides pure .)

This lets us write prisms already (an exercise: write the instance of Bypass for Tagged ). However, there’s a way to do it with a more elegant class than Bypass . I won’t try to guess how I could’ve thought of it independently, I’ll just tell you about it and we’ll move on.

The class is called Choice :

class Profunctor p => Choice p where left' :: p a b -> p ( Either a c) ( Either b c) p a bp (a c) (b c) right' :: p a b -> p ( Either c a) ( Either c b) p a bp (c a) (c b)

(It’s called right' because right is already taken by a similar method in ArrowChoice .)

An exercise: implement left' using right' (thus showing that it’s enough to have only 1 method out of 2).

The difference between right' and bypass is that bypass requires us to provide a splitting function, while right' just assumes that the input is already split.

This is the result of bypass :

x-----------x _______| |_______ | |_____)_____| | sss///aaaaaaaa)bbbbbbbb\\\bbb | |b| |‾‾‾‾‾)‾‾‾‾‾| |b| | ‾‾|b|‾‾| |‾‾|b|‾‾ |b| x-----------x |b| |b|_________________|b| |bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb| ‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾

This is the result of right' :

x-----------x _______| |_______ | |_____)_____| | Either c a ///aaaaaaaa)bbbbbbbb\\\ Either c b | |c| |‾‾‾‾‾)‾‾‾‾‾| |c| | ‾‾|c|‾‾| |‾‾|c|‾‾ |c| x-----------x |c| |c|_________________|c| |ccccccccccccccccccccc| ‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾

An exercise: implement instance Choice p => Bypass p (don’t forget that you can use Profunctor methods too).

Hm, isn’t that too much exercises— nah, it’s not. Another exercise (a more complicated one): implement instance (Profunctor p, Bypass p) => Choice p .

Basic operations on prisms

review lets us convert b to t using a prism, and it’s the same as for isomorphisms:

type AReview t b = Tagged b ( Identity b) -> Tagged t ( Identity t) t bb (b)t (t) review :: AReview t b -> b -> t t b = runIdentity . unTagged . r . Tagged . Identity review rrunIdentityunTagged

prism lets us construct a prism from 2 functions; it’s trivial with bypass and slightly less trivial with right' . You should try implementing it by yourself before looking at this definition:

-- This uses dimap instead of lmap+rmap because why not (and also because -- that's what is used in lens): -- -- dimap f g = lmap f . rmap g prism :: (b -> t) -> (s -> Either t a) -> Prism s t a b (bt)(st a)s t a b = dimap seta ( either pure ( fmap bt)) . right' prism bt setadimap seta (bt))right'

Market

As with isomorphisms, we’d like to be able to decompose a prism back into functions from which that prism was created. We used Exchange with isomorphisms:

data Exchange a b s t = Exchange (s -> a) (b -> t) a b s t(sa) (bt)

The corresponding type for prisms is called Market :

data Market a b s t = Market (b -> t) (s -> Either t a) a b s t(bt) (st a)

Writing instances of Functor , Profunctor , and Choice for Market is boring and doesn’t require almost any thinking (just follow the types), so you can copy them from here:

instance Functor ( Market a b s) where a b s) fmap f ( Market bt seta) = Market (f . bt) ( either ( Left . f) Right . seta) f (bt seta)(fbt) (f)seta) instance Profunctor ( Market a b) where a b) Market bt seta) = Market bt (seta . f) lmap f (bt seta)bt (setaf) Market bt seta) = fmap f ( Market bt seta) rmap f (bt seta)f (bt seta) instance Choice ( Market a b) where a b) Market bt seta) = Market ( Right . bt) $ \cs -> case cs of right' (bt seta)bt)\cscs Left c -> Left ( Left c) c) Right s -> case seta s of seta s Left t -> Left ( Right t) t) Right a -> Right a

Decomposing the prism actually doesn’t require any thinking either, especially if you use holes ( _ ) liberally.

unPrism :: Prism s t a b -> (b -> t, s -> Either t a) s t a b(bt, st a) = unPrism p let -- bft :: b -> Identity t -- setfa :: s -> Either (Identity t) a Market bft setfa = p ( Market Identity Right ) bft setfap ( -- bt :: b -> t -- seta :: s -> Either t a = runIdentity . bft btrunIdentitybft = either ( Left . runIdentity) Right . setfa setarunIdentity)setfa in (bt, seta) (bt, seta)

Instead of unPrism , lens defines withPrism , which is almost the same thing:

withPrism :: APrism s t a b -> ((b -> t) -> (s -> Either t a) -> r) -> r s t a b((bt)(st a)r)

It also uses APrism instead of Prism to require as little polymorphism as possible:

type APrism s t a b = Market a b a ( Identity b) -> Market a b s ( Identity t) s t a ba b a (b)a b s (t)

Coercions everywhere

If you look at the definition of withPrism in lens, you’ll see that starting from GHC 7.8 it uses a much simpler definition:

= case coerce (p ( Market Identity Right )) of withPrism p fcoerce (p ()) Market bt seta -> f bt seta bt setaf bt seta

coerce is a function that lets you convert between things that have the same memory representation:

coerce :: Identity a -> a coerce :: [ Identity a] -> [a] a][a] coerce :: [ Identity ( Maybe a)] -> Identity [ Maybe ( Identity a)] a)]a)] ...

Generally, if you have 2 types that only differ in newtypes ( Identity , Tagged , Const , etc), coerce would always be able to convert one to another. In case of withPrism , coerce removes 2 applications of Identity .

Now look at review :

= runIdentity . unTagged . r . Tagged . Identity review rrunIdentityunTagged

It does nothing but wrap and unwrap newtypes. We can replace it all with coerce :

= coerce reviewcoerce

In lens, however, it’s implemented like this:

= runIdentity #. unTagged #. r .# Tagged .# Identity review rrunIdentityunTagged

Here #. and .# are operators that do the same thing as lmap and rmap (you could think of them both as of . ) but require one argument to be something like Tagged or runIdentity . So, the whole chain still gets interpreted as a coercion (and thus it’s fast), but it shows the steps more clearly.

Some prisms

Okay, back to prisms. The simplest ones are _Left and _Right :

_Left :: Prism ( Either a c) ( Either b c) a b a c) (b c) a b _Right :: Prism ( Either c a) ( Either c b) a b c a) (c b) a b

Unlike with lenses, there’s no manual way to write a prism (apart from using dimap and so on), so you’ll have to use prism :

= prism Left ( either Right ( Left . Right )) _Leftprism)) = prism Right ( either ( Left . Left ) Right ) _Rightprism

You can use prisms as traversals:

> Left 0 ^? _Left _Left Just 0 > Right 1 ^? _Left _Left Nothing

You can use prisms as constructors, too:

> review _Left 0 review _Left Left 0

# is another name for review :

> _Left # 0 _Left Left 0

Prisms don’t necessarily have to be constructors – e.g. look at _Show :

_Show :: ( Read a, Show a) => Prism' String a a,a)

> _Show # 0 _Show "0" > "EQ" ^? _Show :: Maybe Ordering Just EQ

Or hex (from Numeric.Lens ):

hex :: Integral a => Prism' String a

> "ad32" ^? hex hex Just 44338 > hex # 5710 hex "164e" > 5710 ^. re hex re hex "164e"

re makes a getter out of a prism:

re :: Prism s t a b -> Getter b t s t a bb t = to (p # ) re pto (p

Prisms as smart constructors

Prisms are quite useful as smart constructors, because you can compose them and the resulting thing would still be usable both as a constructor and as a deconstructor/pattern:

-- duplication! = Left . Left . Left makeL3 Left ( Left ( Left x))) = Just x getL3 (x))) = Nothing getL3 _ -- better = _Left . _Left . _Left _L3_Left_Left_Left

This is particularly useful when you’re working with e.g. JSON or Template Haskell and want to create “aliases” for long chains of patterns.

Another nice thing about prisms is that you can check them with has , but you can’t do the same with constructors:

> has _Left ( Right 0 ) has _Left ( False -- Without prisms, we have to use a helper that somebody else wrote: > isLeft ( Right 0 ) isLeft ( False

(You can even use is instead of has if you export Control.Lens.Extras .)

Here are some places with more prisms:

Data.List.Lens provides prefixed and suffixed

provides and Numeric.Lens provides integral and base / hex / octal /etc

provides and / / /etc Control.Exception.Lens , System.Exit.Lens , System.IO.Error.Lens are for exceptions and error codes

, , are for exceptions and error codes Data.Dynamic.Lens has _Dynamic

has GHC.Generics.Lens has _V1 , _U1 , etc

has , , etc Language.Haskell.TH.Lens has prisms for all Template Haskell data types

has prisms for all Template Haskell data types Data.Aeson.Lens has prisms (and lenses) for Aeson types

Half-simple prisms

Remember how I said that you can build simple prisms with prism' ?

prism' :: (a -> s) -> (s -> Maybe a) -> Prism' s a (as)(sa)s a

Well, the actual type in lens is slightly more general:

prism' :: (b -> s) -> (s -> Maybe a) -> Prism s s a b (bs)(sa)s s a b

There are several prisms in lens that are “half-simple” – for instance, integral and _Void :

integral :: ( Integral a, Integral b) => Prism Integer Integer a b a,b)a b _Void :: Prism s s a Void s s a

And now, instead of explanations – exercises:

What can you do with lens’s integral that you can’t do with this one? integral :: Integral a => Prism' Integer a

Reflect on the nature of _Void .

Prism utilities

lens defines some utilities for prisms, so let’s look at them and figure out what they are for. (We won’t bother implementing them, because they all are pretty easy to get with withPrism .)

aside :: Prism s t a b -> Prism (e, s) (e, t) (e, a) (e, b) s t a b(e, s) (e, t) (e, a) (e, b)

without :: Prism s t a b -> Prism u v c d s t a bu v c d -> Prism ( Either s u) ( Either t v) ( Either a c) ( Either b d) s u) (t v) (a c) (b d)

It should be obvious from the signatures what these do.

To be honest, I don’t know when they are useful.

below :: Traversable f => Prism' s a -> Prism' (f s) (f a) s a(f s) (f a)

below lets you define patterns like this:

-- pseudocode Right a, Right b, ... , Right x] = do something with [a,b, ... ,x] f [a,b,x]something with [a,b,,x] = do whatever else f _whatever

In other words, below p checks that all elements in some structure match the prism p , and if they do, it strips p from those elements:

> [ Right 'a' , Right 'b' , Right 'c' ] ^? below _Right below _Right Just "abc" > [ Right 'a' , Right 'b' , Left 'c' ] ^? below _Right below _Right Nothing

The structure can be anything Traversable (so it doesn’t have to be a list).

outside :: Prism s t a b -> Lens (t -> r) (s -> r) (b -> r) (a -> r) s t a b(tr) (sr) (br) (ar)

The documentation for outside is a bit mysterious:

Use a Prism as a kind of first-class pattern.

To figure it out, let’s apply outside to some prism and look at the resulting type:

outside _Right :: Lens ( Either c b -> r) ( Either c a -> r) (b -> r) (a -> r) c br) (c ar) (br) (ar)

And let’s restrict the type to Lens' :

_Right :: Lens' ( Either c a -> r) (a -> r) outsidec ar) (ar)

Okay, it’s clearer now. Given some function that works on Either , we can:

find out what it does with the right part of Either

make it do something else with the right part of Either

Let’s define fromLeft :

fromLeft :: Either a b -> a a b Left a) = a fromLeft (a) = error "right" fromLeft _

What does fromLeft do with a Left ?

> (fromLeft ^. outside _Left) 0 -- equivalent to “fromLeft (Left 0)” (fromLeftoutside _Left) 0

And a Right ?

> (fromLeft ^. outside _Right) 0 -- equivalent to “fromLeft (Right 0)” (fromLeftoutside _Right) *** Exception : hi hi

Okay, that’s not terribly interesting. The modifying part is better:

> let fromLeftDef def = fromLeft & outside _Right .~ const def fromLeftDef deffromLeftoutside _Rightdef > fromLeftDef 0 ( Left 5 ) fromLeftDef 5 > fromLeftDef 0 ( Right 5 ) fromLeftDef 0

We’ve already seen similar function-modifying behavior with ix :

> let safeDiv x = (x `div` ) & at 0 .~ 0 safeDiv x(xat > safeDiv 6 2 safeDiv 3 > safeDiv 6 0 safeDiv 0

The difference between ix and outside is that you can only use ix with arguments that can be compared with == , while outside is more like pattern-matching. (An exercise: look at only and figure out how to use it with outside to modify a function’s value at some point.)

Final exercise

We made Traversal1 out of Traversal by switching Applicative with Apply . Similarly we could try to get Prism1 :

type Prism1 s t a b = s t a b forall p f . ( Choice p, Apply f) => p a (f b) -> p s (f t) p fp,f)p a (f b)p s (f t)

Since Prism1 can return at least one a and at most one a , it’s the same as Iso . (Remember: prisms are 0-or-1 traversals, so Prism1 is a 1-or-1 traversal, so it’s a getter in one direction and a getter in another direction, so it’s simply s -> a plus b -> t , so it’s the same as Iso .)

(Actually, since it won’t ever return more than 1 element, we can even replace Apply with Functor .)

Now, getting b -> t out of Prism1 is easy and we’ve done it before:

prism1ToIso :: Prism1 s t a b -> Iso s t a b s t a bs t a b = prism1ToIso p let bt = runIdentity . unTagged . p . Tagged . Identity btrunIdentityunTagged = ... sa in iso sa bt iso sa bt

Your task is to get s -> a and complete prism1ToIso .

Answers to some exercises

convert between Bypass and Choice

instance Choice p => Bypass p where = rmap ( either id id ) . lmap sat . left' bypass satrmap (lmap satleft' instance ( Profunctor p, Bypass p) => Choice p where p,p) = bypass ( either ( Right . Left ) Left ) . rmap Right right'bypass (rmap

What can you do with lens’s integral that you can’t do with this one? integral :: Integral a => Prism' Integer a

With this integral you wouldn’t be able to use a type-changing function internally. For instance, imagine that you have f :: Word -> Int , and you want to convert the Integer to Word , apply f , and convert the Int back to Integer . You can do it with original integral like this:

> n & integral %~ f integral

but not with a type-restricted integral .

Reflect on the nature of _Void .

_Void :: forall a . Prism s s a Void s s a

_Void shows that forall a. a is equivalent to Void (that is, both are uninhabited types, and don’t nitpick about undefined .)

Well, it probably shows more things than that, but whatever.