base-4.7.0.0: Basic libraries

Copyright | (c) The University of Glasgow 2001
License | BSD-style (see the file libraries/base/LICENSE)
Maintainer | libraries@haskell.org
Stability | provisional
Portability | portable
Safe Haskell | Unsafe
Language | Haskell2010

Data.Coerce

Contents

- Safe coercions

Description

Safe coercions between data types.

More in-depth information can be found on the Roles wiki page

Since: 4.7.0.0

Synopsis

- coerce :: Coercible k a b => a -> b
- class Coercible a b

# Safe coercions

coerce :: Coercible k a b => a -> b Source

The function `coerce` allows you to safely convert between values of types that have the same representation with no run-time overhead. In the simplest case you can use it instead of a newtype constructor, to go from the newtype's concrete type to the abstract type. But it also works in more complicated settings, e.g. converting a list of newtypes to a list of concrete types.

class Coercible a b Source

This two-parameter class has instances for types `a` and `b` if the compiler can infer that they have the same representation. This class does not have regular instances; instead they are created on-the-fly during type-checking. Trying to manually declare an instance of `Coercible` is an error.

Nevertheless one can pretend that the following three kinds of instances exist. First, as a trivial base-case:

    instance a a

Furthermore, for every type constructor there is an instance that allows to coerce under the type constructor. For example, let `D` be a prototypical type constructor (`data` or `newtype`) with three type arguments, which have roles `nominal`, `representational` resp. `phantom`. Then there is an instance of the form

    instance Coercible b b' => Coercible (D a b c) (D a b' c')

Note that the `nominal` type arguments are equal, the `representational` type arguments can differ, but need to have a `Coercible` instance themself, and the `phantom` type arguments can be changed arbitrarily.

The third kind of instance exists for every `newtype NT = MkNT T` and comes in two variants, namely

    instance Coercible a T => Coercible a NT

    instance Coercible T b => Coercible NT b

This instance is only usable if the constructor `MkNT` is in scope.

If, as a library author of a type constructor like `Set a`, you want to prevent a user of your module to write `coerce :: Set T -> Set NT`, you need to set the role of `Set`'s type parameter to `nominal`, by writing

    type role Set nominal

For more details about this feature, please refer to Safe Coercions by Joachim Breitner, Richard A. Eisenberg, Simon Peyton Jones and Stephanie Weirich.

Since: 4.7.0.0