Probably the most important phase in the frontend is the type checker,
which is located at fptools/ghc/compiler/typecheck/.
GHC type checks programs in their original Haskell form before the
desugarer converts them into Core code. This complicates the type
checker as it has to handle the much more verbose Haskell AST, but it
improves error messages, as the those message are based on the same
structure that the user sees.
GHC defines the abstract syntax of Haskell programs in HsSyn
using a structure that abstracts over the concrete representation of
bound occurences of identifiers and patterns. The module TcHsSyn
instantiates this structure for the type checker using TcEnv.TcId
to represent identifiers - in fact, a TcId is currently
nothing but just a synonym for a plain
Id.
During type checking type variables are represented by mutable variables
- cf. the variable story. Consequently,
unification can instantiate type variables by updating those mutable
variables. This process of instantiation is (for reasons that elude
me) called zonking
in GHC's sources. The zonking routines for the various forms of Haskell
constructs are responsible for most of the code in the module TcHsSyn,
whereas the routines that actually operate on mutable types are defined
in TcMTypes;
this includes routines to create mutable structures and update them as
well as routines that check constraints, such as that type variables in
function signatures have not been instantiated during type checking.
The actual type unification routine is uTys in the same
module.
All type variables that may be instantiated (those in signatures
may not), but haven't been instantiated during type checking, are zonked
to (), so that after type checking all mutable variables
have been eliminated.
During type checking, GHC maintains a type environment whose
details are fixed in TcEnv.lhs.
Among other things, the environment contains all imported and local
instances as well as a list of global entities (imported and
local types and classes together with imported identifiers) and
local entities (locally defined identifiers). This environment
is threaded through the type checking monad.
Expressions are type checked by TcExpr.lhs.
Usage occurences of identifiers are processed by the function
tcId whose main purpose is to instantiate
overloaded identifiers. It essentially calls
TcInst.instOverloadedFun once for each universally
quantified set of type constraints. It should be noted that overloaded
identifiers are replaced by new names that are first defined in the LIE
(Local Instance Environment?) and later promoted into top-level
bindings.
GHC implements overloading using so-called dictionaries. A dictionary is a tuple of functions -- one function for each method in the class of which the dictionary implements an instance. During type checking, GHC replaces each type constraint of a function with one additional argument. At runtime, the extended function gets passed a matching class dictionary by way of these additional arguments. Whenever the function needs to call a method of such a class, it simply extracts it from the dictionary.
This sounds simple enough; however, the actual implementation is a bit
more tricky as it wants to keep track of all the instances at which
overloaded functions are used in a module. This information is useful
to optimise the code. The implementation is the module Inst.lhs.
The function instOverloadedFun is invoked for each
overloaded usage occurence of an identifier, where overloaded means that
the type of the idendifier contains a non-trivial type constraint. It
proceeds in two steps: (1) Allocation of a method instance
(newMethodWithGivenTy) and (2) instantiation of functional
dependencies. The former implies allocating a new unique identifier,
which replaces the original (overloaded) identifier at the currently
type-checked usage occurrence.
The new identifier (after being threaded through the LIE) eventually
will be bound by a top-level binding whose rhs contains a partial
application of the original overloaded identifier. This papp applies
the overloaded function to the dictionaries needed for the current
instance. In GHC lingo, this is called a method. Before
becoming a top-level binding, the method is first represented as a value
of type Inst.Inst, which makes it easy to fold multiple
instances of the same identifier at the same types into one global
definition. (And probably other things, too, which I haven't
investigated yet.)
Note: As of 13 January 2001 (wrt. to the code in the
CVS HEAD), the above mechanism interferes badly with RULES pragmas
defined over overloaded functions. During instantiation, a new name is
created for an overloaded function partially applied to the dictionaries
needed in a usage position of that function. As the rewrite rule,
however, mentions the original overloaded name, it won't fire anymore
-- unless later phases remove the intermediate definition again. The
latest CVS version of GHC has an option
-fno-method-sharing, which avoids sharing instantiation
stubs. This is usually/often/sometimes sufficient to make the rules
fire again.
Last modified: Tue Nov 13 14:28:44 EST 2001