[Haskell-cafe] creating a type based on a string

[Daniel Peebles]

What you're asking for is essentially a dependent type (something where a
type depends on a value). Haskell doesn't support these, but can approximate
them with GADTs:


{-# LANGUAGE GADTs, EmptyDataDecls, KindSignatures, Rank2Types #-}

data A
data B

-- The data constructors refine the type index
data X :: * -> * where
  A :: X A
  B :: X B

-- We can't return a different type based on the input string (unless you
represent the string as some complex GADT that itself refines the output
type), so instead we have a pseudo-existential type represented as a
polymorphic function parameter.
-- This basically says, "if you give me a string and a function that can
work on X n for all values of n, I'll give you something of the same type as
the return value of that function"
op :: String -> (forall n. X n -> r) -> r
op "a" f = f A
op "b" f = f B


If you give a more detailed example of what you need, we might be able to
tell you better approaches, though. This rank-2/existential approach is
mostly useful for preserving internal (hidden from the end-user) type-level
constraints on GADT indices.


On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 10:31 PM, Andrew U. Frank <
frank22 at geoinfo.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:

> I have a user input (string) and need to select one of two types.
> depending what the input is. is this possible?
>
> data A
> data B
>
> data X n = X String
>
> op :: String -> X n
> op "a" = X "a" :: X A
> op "b" = X "b" :: X B
>
> this does obviously not compile. is there a way to achieve that the type
> X A is produced when the input is "a" and X B when the input is "b"?
>
> thank you for help!
> andrew
>
>
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