[m-dev.] dummy types with user-defined equality/comparison

[Mark Brown]

On 29-May-2006, maclarty at cs.mu.OZ.AU <maclarty at cs.mu.OZ.AU> wrote:
> On Mon, May 29, 2006 at 05:09:09PM +1000, Julien Fischer wrote:
> > 
> > Currently the compiler will abort when confronted with a dummy type that has
> > user-defined equality or comparison.  Below are two proposals for fixing
> > this.  Which do people prefer?
> > 
> > (1) Change the reference manual to say that discriminated union types
> >     whose body consists of a single zero-arity constructor may not have
> >     user-defined equality or comparison defined upon them.  (Plus change
> >     the compiler to emit the appropriate error mesages.)
> > 
> 
> I think this option is best, since if values of the type are restricted
> to one zero-arity function symbol then any two values of the type must
> compare as equal for all sound definitions of equality and comparison.

I agree that this option is best.

Note, however, that our intended interpretation of dummy types is not
meant to be reflected in the value given by the type declaration.  For
example, if the io.state type were defined as a dummy type then the
intent is that there are many different (i.e., not equal) values.  If
the compiler was allowed to reason that there is only one possible state
of the world, then it could in theory infer that main/2 means that same
as '='/2.  :-(

I don't think it's urgent that we do anything about this, though.  For the
way that dummy types like io and store are used, it is the unique inst which
gives the important information, not the type.

Cheers,
Mark.

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