[m-dev.] Adding Loops to Mercury

[Mark Brown]

Hi Peter,

On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 12:37 PM, Peter Schachte <pschachte at gmail.com> wrote:
> The big problem, as observed earlier, is the lack of support for
> constructor classes.  That means we can't allow people to define
> sequence_empty and sequence_next for their own types, so this would be
> limited to lists.

When I try this, the problem I hit is the restriction on typeclass
instances not being able to have variables as parameters.

Here's a typeclass I want to define:

    :- typeclass foldable(C, E) where [
        pred fold(pred(E, A, A), C, A, A),
        mode fold(in(pred(in, in, out) is det), in, in, out) is det
    ].

Currently in Mercury I can define an instance for foldable(map(K, V),
pair(K, V)), but not foldable(list(T), T) or foldable(set(T), T).

I'm not sure why Julien brought constructor classes up.

Cheers,
Mark.