[mercury-users] 're-creating' higher order insts?

[Mark Brown]

On 08-Oct-2007, Ondrej Bojar <bojar at csse.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Mark Brown wrote:
>> This is on the right track.  You want something like
>> :- pred assert_function_is_inst_foo(..., func_type::in, 
>> func_type::out(foo))
>> 	is {semi,}det.
>
> Exactly. It's just my limited English (or possibly any natural language 
> skills) that I needed that many words. I should have written Mercury 
> instead. :-)
>
>> 1) You can replace the static checking with dynamic checking.  Your
>> application will have a fixed set of insts that it is interested in, so
>> you can create a type to describe every possible inst.  Then construct a
>> value of this type each time you put a function in the ADT, and make sure
>> you keep track of which value goes with with function (e.g., by packaging
>> them up in the same term).  You can pass this information in the ... part
>> of the assert_function_is_inst_foo predicate, above, which can throw an
>> exception or fail if it is anything other than "foo".
>
> I understand this technique, but I don't see how to do the final assert. Or 
> is
> this definition of the assert_function_is_inst_foo above valid?
>
> assert_function_is_inst_foo(..., Func, Func).
>
> I'd expect to need some magical promise_I_know_the_inst_better_than_you 
> call.

Yes, I skimmed over that bit.  Ultimately there will be a call to
something like "unsafe_promise_function_is_inst_foo", which has a
definition equivalent to

	unsafe_promise_function_is_inst_foo(Func, Func)

but which is written (trivially) using the foreign language interface.
Going via foreign code gets around the compiler checking and so allows the
more specific inst to be given for the result value.

Cheers,
Mark.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
mercury-users mailing list
Post messages to:       mercury-users at csse.unimelb.edu.au
Administrative Queries: owner-mercury-users at csse.unimelb.edu.au
Subscriptions:          mercury-users-request at csse.unimelb.edu.au
--------------------------------------------------------------------------