[Haskell-cafe] What is the rank of a polymorphic type?

[Martijn van Steenbergen]

Eugene Kirpichov wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> Consider the type: (forall a . a) -> String.
> 
> On one hand, it is rank-2 polymorphic, because it abstracts over a
> rank-1 polymorphic type.
> On the other hand, it is monomorphic because it isn't actually
> quantified itself: in my intuitive view, a parametrically polymorphic
> type has infinitely many instantiations (for example, Int -> Int is an
> instantiation of forall a . a -> a, and String -> String also is), and
> this type doesn't have any instantiations at all.
> 
> Which is correct? Is there really a contradiction? What is the
> definition of rank of a polymorphic type?

There's a nice paper about this:

Simon Peyton Jones, Dimitrios Vytiniotis, Stephanie Weirich and Mark Shields
"Practical type inference for arbitrary-rank types"
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/higher-rank/putting.pdf

Section 3.1 of that paper defines what rank types have: "The rank of a 
type describes the depth at which universal quantifiers appear 
contravariantly"

Looking at the examples that are then given I'd say your example has 
rank 2 (but I'm no expert). It only mentions the depth of the forall, 
not whether it has any instantiations.

HTH,

Martijn.