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Implicit Priorirty with Contravariant Type
In Scalaz, we have instances of the FoldRight type class for Iterable
and Stream. The Stream instance handles infinite streams lazily.
However, when requesting an implicit of FoldRight[Stream], I get
FoldRight[Iterable]. This example demonstrates the problem:
http://gist.github.com/260886.
We could make FoldRight invariant to solve this, but then would have
to write boilerplate for all know subtypes of Iterable, just to
specialise for Stream.
1. Why is FoldRight[Iterable] preferred to FoldRight[Stream]?
Intuitively, FoldRight[Stream] is more specific.
2. Is there any trick to make FoldRight[Iterable] lower in priority to
FoldRight[Stream]? The usual trick to place a conversion in a super
class only makes them of equal priority.
I'm using 2.8.0 Beta RC4.
Thanks,
-jason
Re: Implicit Priorirty with Contravariant Type
Here is a distilled example: http://gist.github.com/260934
The compiler prefers the implicit that returns FoldRight[Iterable]
because FoldRight[Iterable] <:< FoldRight[Stream], as checked in
Infer.isAsSpecificValueType(). This makes sense to me now, even if it
doesn't help in this situation.
After looking at the selection algorithm in Infer.scala, I don't see
any way force prioritization of FoldRight[Stream]. About all I could
suggest is an annotation to provide further control over implicit
prioritisation, ie to add (1, 0, or -1) to the calculated priority
based on the subclass and specificity rules.
-jason
On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 11:01 AM, Jason Zaugg wrote:
> 1. Why is FoldRight[Iterable] preferred to FoldRight[Stream]?
> Intuitively, FoldRight[Stream] is more specific.
> 2. Is there any trick to make FoldRight[Iterable] lower in priority to
> FoldRight[Stream]? The usual trick to place a conversion in a super
> class only makes them of equal priority.
>
> I'm using 2.8.0 Beta RC4.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -jason
>
Re: Implicit Priorirty with Contravariant Type
I'll end this little discussion with myself by abandoning
contravariance and sharing some links -- a wontfix ticket describing
this very quandry [1], the attempt to make Ordering contravariant in X
similarly derailed, and a hopeful plea that one day this may all work
differently [3]
Nuttycom said it best: "What I find surprising about this is that
specificity is conflated with the direction of the variance. At least
to my mind, variance is associated with substitutability, whereas
specificity is a unidirectional relation in the direction of
covariance.
The concepts aren't totally orthogonal; it's more like there should be
a distinction between subclassing (where subclasses are always more
specific) and subtyping, where an instance of a subtype is always
substitutable for an instance of the supertype."
[1] http://lampsvn.epfl.ch/trac/scala/ticket/2509
[2] http://old.nabble.com/Contravariant-Ordering-T-,-java.util.Comparator,-a...
[3] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.scala.internals/2464
On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 2:03 PM, Jason Zaugg wrote:
> Here is a distilled example: http://gist.github.com/260934
>
> The compiler prefers the implicit that returns FoldRight[Iterable]
> because FoldRight[Iterable] <:< FoldRight[Stream], as checked in
> Infer.isAsSpecificValueType(). This makes sense to me now, even if it
> doesn't help in this situation.
>
> After looking at the selection algorithm in Infer.scala, I don't see
> any way force prioritization of FoldRight[Stream]. About all I could
> suggest is an annotation to provide further control over implicit
> prioritisation, ie to add (1, 0, or -1) to the calculated priority
> based on the subclass and specificity rules.
>
> -jason
>
> On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 11:01 AM, Jason Zaugg wrote:
>> 1. Why is FoldRight[Iterable] preferred to FoldRight[Stream]?
>> Intuitively, FoldRight[Stream] is more specific.
>> 2. Is there any trick to make FoldRight[Iterable] lower in priority to
>> FoldRight[Stream]? The usual trick to place a conversion in a super
>> class only makes them of equal priority.
>>
>> I'm using 2.8.0 Beta RC4.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> -jason
>>
>