Copyright | (c) The University of Glasgow 2001 |
---|---|
License | BSD-style (see the file libraries/base/LICENSE) |
Maintainer | libraries@haskell.org |
Stability | provisional |
Portability | portable |
Safe Haskell | Unsafe |
Language | Haskell2010 |
Data.Coerce
Contents
Description
Safe coercions between data types.
More in-depth information can be found on the Roles wiki page
Since: 4.7.0.0
Safe coercions
coerce :: Coercible * a b => a -> b Source
The function coerce
allows you to safely convert between values of
types that have the same representation with no run-time overhead. In the
simplest case you can use it instead of a newtype constructor, to go from
the newtype's concrete type to the abstract type. But it also works in
more complicated settings, e.g. converting a list of newtypes to a list of
concrete types.
This two-parameter class has instances for types a
and b
if
the compiler can infer that they have the same representation. This class
does not have regular instances; instead they are created on-the-fly during
type-checking. Trying to manually declare an instance of Coercible
is an error.
Nevertheless one can pretend that the following three kinds of instances exist. First, as a trivial base-case:
instance a a
Furthermore, for every type constructor there is
an instance that allows to coerce under the type constructor. For
example, let D
be a prototypical type constructor (data
or
newtype
) with three type arguments, which have roles nominal
,
representational
resp. phantom
. Then there is an instance of
the form
instance Coercible b b' => Coercible (D a b c) (D a b' c')
Note that the nominal
type arguments are equal, the
representational
type arguments can differ, but need to have a
Coercible
instance themself, and the phantom
type arguments can be
changed arbitrarily.
The third kind of instance exists for every newtype NT = MkNT T
and
comes in two variants, namely
instance Coercible a T => Coercible a NT
instance Coercible T b => Coercible NT b
This instance is only usable if the constructor MkNT
is in scope.
If, as a library author of a type constructor like Set a
, you
want to prevent a user of your module to write
coerce :: Set T -> Set NT
,
you need to set the role of Set
's type parameter to nominal
,
by writing
type role Set nominal
For more details about this feature, please refer to Safe Coercions by Joachim Breitner, Richard A. Eisenberg, Simon Peyton Jones and Stephanie Weirich.
Since: 4.7.0.0
Instances
Typeable (k -> k -> Constraint) (Coercible k) |