suggestion: A common type class for mutable variables

[Henning Thielemann]

On Mon, 3 Jun 2013, Edward Kmett wrote:

> The first option is
> 
> class Monad m => MonadRef r m | m -> r where
>   newRef :: a -> m (r a)
>   ...
> 
> This has the benefit of using quite portable extensions.
> 
> The second option is
> 
> class Monad m => MonadRef m where  type Ref m :: * -> *
>   newRef :: a -> m (Ref m a)
>  
> This takes us into GHC specific territory, by using type families, but avoids polluting every type that uses
> one with an extra 'ref' param. I use this variant in my as-yet-unreleased 'revisions' package.
> 
> Both of these have the benefit that they can work with transformers, but they carry the limitation that you
> can't have multiple reference types for the same monad. e.g. you can't use the same combinators for both
> IORefs and, say, MVars or TVars within the same monad. This is arguably not so much a problem as they have
> very different operational semantics!

I thought the functional dependency should be the other way round: From 
the reference type to the monad where it lives in.