Skip to content

Odd interaction between rank-2 types and type families

Type inference does not work as expected, when a rank-2 type has a type-family constraint. Consider the following program:

{-# LANGUAGE TypeFamilies #-}
{-# LANGUAGE Rank2Types   #-}

type family F a

f :: (forall s. (F s ~ Int) => s -> b) -> b
f _ = undefined

k :: s -> Char
k = undefined

example :: Bool
example = const True (f k)

It is rejected with the following error:

Couldn't match type ‘b0’ with ‘Char’
      ‘b0’ is untouchable
        inside the constraints (F s ~ Int)
        bound by a type expected by the context: (F s ~ Int) => s -> b0
        at bug.hs:13:23-25
    Expected type: s -> b0
      Actual type: s -> Char
    In the first argument of ‘f’, namely ‘k’
    In the second argument of ‘const’, namely ‘(f k)’

This is unexpected because the result of f should be the same as the result of its parameter, and we know the exact type of the parameter, namely Char.

Edited by Iavor S. Diatchki
To upload designs, you'll need to enable LFS and have an admin enable hashed storage. More information