[mercury-users] restriction on typeclass instances

[David Glen JEFFERY]

On 15-Nov-1999, Mark Anthony BROWN <dougl at cs.mu.OZ.AU> wrote:
> 
> If you change the definition of `thing' to
> 
> 	:- type thing(T) ---> thing(T).
> 
> then your example should compile OK (and not throw unexpected exceptions).
> This has worked for me the one or two times I have needed it,
> though I'm not claiming it will always work.

> [...]
> 
> So, I agree that the restriction *could* be a pain, but I'm not
> convinced.  Can anyone think of an example where this work-around
> would not be adequate to overcome the restriction?

I'm prety sure the scheme you've described will always work, however there
are times when it can be a considerable pain. For example, you may need to
apply the `thing' functor to all the elements in your data structure, which
could mean having to write extra traversal code. It *may* even be the case
that the compiler has trouble optimising away the traversal.

eg. Would the compiler be able to optimise this:

	list__map((pred(A::in, B::out) is det :- B = thing(A)), Xs, Ys)

into this:
	
	Xs = Ys

(In this case I think it would, but I imagine that there are more complicated
cases that it might not catch).



dgj
-- 
David Jeffery (dgj at cs.mu.oz.au) | If your thesis is utterly vacuous
PhD student,                    | Use first-order predicate calculus.
Dept. of Comp. Sci. & Soft. Eng.|     With sufficient formality
The University of Melbourne     |     The sheerist banality
Australia                       | Will be hailed by the critics: "Miraculous!"
                                |     -- Anon.
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