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+ <title>The GHC Commentary - Hybrid Types</title>
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+ <h1>The GHC Commentary - Hybrid Types</h1>
+ <p>
+ GHC essentially supports two type systems: (1) the <em>source type
+ system</em> (which is a heavily extended version of the type system of
+ Haskell 98) and the <em>Core type system,</em> which is the type system
+ used by the by far most important intermediate language (see also <a
+ href="desugar.html">Sugar Free: From Haskell To Core</a>).
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ During parsing and renaming, type information is represented in a form
+ that is very close to Haskell's concrete syntax; it is defined by
+ <code>HsTypes.HsType</code>. In addition, type, class, and instance
+ declarations are maintained in their source form as defined in the
+ module <code>HsDecl</code>. The situation changes during type checking,
+ where types are translated into a second representation, which is
+ defined in the module <code>types/TypeRep.lhs</code>, as type
+ <code>Type</code>. This second representation is peculiar in that it is
+ a hybrid between the source representation of types and the Core
+ representation of types. Using functions, such as
+ <code>Type.coreView</code> and <code>Type.deepCoreView</code>, a value
+ of type <code>Type</code> exhibits its Core representation. On the
+ other hand, pretty printing a <code>Type</code> with
+ <code>TypeRep.pprType</code> yields the type's source representation.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In fact, the <a href="typecheck.html">type checker</a> maintains type
+ environments based on <code>Type</code>, but needs to perform type
+ checking on source-level types. As a result, we have functions
+ <code>Type.tcEqType</code> and <code>Type.tcCmpType</code>, which
+ compare types based on their source representation, as well as the
+ function <code>coreEqType</code>, which compares them based on their
+ core representation. The latter is needed during type checking of Core
+ (as performed by the functions in the module
+ <code>coreSyn/CoreLint.lhs</code>).
+ </p>
+
+ <h2>Type Synonyms</h2>
+ <p>
+ Type synonyms in Haskell are essentially a form of macro definitions on
+ the type level. For example, when the type checker compares two type
+ terms, synonyms are always compared in their expanded form. However, to
+ produce good error messages, we like to avoid expanding type synonyms
+ during pretty printing. Hence, <code>Type</code> has a variant
+ <code>NoteTy TyNote Type</code>, where
+ </p>
+ <blockquote>
+ <pre>
+data TyNote
+ = FTVNote TyVarSet -- The free type variables of the noted expression
+
+ | SynNote Type -- Used for type synonyms
+ -- The Type is always a TyConApp, and is the un-expanded form.
+ -- The type to which the note is attached is the expanded form.</pre>
+ </blockquote>
+ <p>
+ In other words, a <code>NoteTy</code> represents the expanded form of a
+ type synonym together with a note stating its source form.
+ </p>
+
+ <h2>Newtypes</h2>
+ <p>
+ Slightly more involved are data types declared via a
+ <code>newtype</code> declaration. These newtypes constitute new type
+ constructors---i.e., they are not just type macros, but introduce new
+ type names. However, provide that a newtype is not recursive, we still
+ want to implement it by its representation type. In other words,
+ <code>tcEqType</code> cannot see through a newtype, but
+ <code>coreEqType</code> can.
+ </p>
+
+ <h2>Predicates</h2>
+ <p>
+ The dictionary translation of type classes, translates each predicate in
+ a type context of a type signature into an additional argument, which
+ carries a dictionary with the functions overloaded by the corresponding
+ class. The <code>Type</code> data type has a special variant
+ <code>PredTy PredType</code> for predicates, where
+ </p>
+ <blockquote>
+ <pre>
+data PredType
+ = ClassP Class [Type] -- Class predicate
+ | IParam (IPName Name) Type -- Implicit parameter</pre>
+ </blockquote>
+ <p>
+ These types need to be handled as source type during type checking, but
+ turn into their representations when inspected through
+ <code>coreView</code>. The representation is determined by
+ <code>Type.predTypeRep</code>.
+ </p>
+
+ <h2>Classes and Instances</h2>
+ <p>
+ Class declarations turn into values of type <code>Class.Class</code>.
+ They represent methods as the <code>Id</code>s of the dictionary
+ selector functions. Similar selector functions are available for
+ superclass dictionaries.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Instance declarations turn into values of type
+ <code>InstEnv.Instance</code>, which in interface files are represented
+ as <code>IfaceSyn.IfaceInst</code>. Moreover, the type
+ <code>InstEnv.InstEnv</code>, which is a synonym for <code>UniqFM
+ ClsInstEnv</code>, provides a mapping of classes to their instances -
+ <code>ClsInstEnv</code> is essentially a list of instance declarations.
+ </p>
+
+ <p><small>
+<!-- hhmts start -->
+Last modified: Thu May 12 22:47:50 EST 2005
+<!-- hhmts end -->
+ </small></p>
+ </body>
+</html>
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