Generalized algebraic data types (GADTs), sometimes known as “guarded recursive data types ” or “first-class phantom types”, are a simple but powerful generalization of the data types of Haskell and ML. Recent works have given compelling examples of the utility of GADTs, although type inference is known to be difficult. Our contribution is to show how to exploit programmer-supplied type annotations to make the type inference task almost embarrassingly easy. Our main technical innovation is wobbly types, which express in a declarative way the uncertainty caused by the incremental nature of typical type-inference algorithms.

Note: This document accompanies the paper “Practical type inference for arbitrary-rank types ” [6]. Prior reading of the main paper is required. 1 Contents

This paper explores a new point in the design space of formal reasoning systems - part programming language, part logical framework. The system is built on a programming language where the user expresses equality constraints between types and the type checker then enforces these constraints. This simple extension to the type system allows the programmer to describe properties of his program in the types of witness objects which can be thought of as concrete evidence that the program has the property desired. These techniques and two other rich typing mechanisms, rank-N polymorphism and extensible kinds, create a powerful new programming idiom for writing programs whose types enforce semantic properties. A language with these features is both a practical programming language and a logic. This marriage between two previously separate entities increases the probability that users will apply formal methods to their programming designs. This kind of synthesis creates the foundations for the languages of the future.

We introduce System FC, which extends System F with support for non-syntactic type equality. There are two main extensions: (i) explicit witnesses for type equalities, and (ii) open, non-parametric type functions, given meaning by toplevel equality axioms. Unlike System F, FC is expressive enough to serve as a target for several different source-language features, including Haskell’s newtype, generalised algebraic data types, associated types, functional dependencies, and perhaps more besides.

Generalised algebraic data types (GADTs), sometimes known as "guarded recursive data types" or "first-class phantom types", are a simple but powerful generalisation of the data types of Haskell and ML. Recent works have given compelling examples of the utility of GADTs, although type inference is known to be difficult.

A heterogeneous collection is a datatype that is capable of storing data of different types, while providing operations for look-up, update, iteration, and others. There are various kinds of heterogeneous collections, differing in representation, invariants, and access operations. We describe HLIST — a Haskell library for strongly typed heterogeneous collections including extensible records. We illustrate HLIST’s benefits in the context of type-safe database access in Haskell. The HLIST library relies on common extensions of Haskell 98. Our exploration raises interesting issues regarding Haskell’s type system, in particular, avoidance of overlapping instances, and reification of type equality and type unification.

This paper describes the history of Haskell, including its genesis and principles, technical contributions, implementations and tools, and applications and impact. 1.

Abstract. There are a number of extended forms of algebraic data types such as type classes with existential types and generalized algebraic data types. Such extensions are highly useful but their interaction has not been studied formally so far. Here, we present a unifying framework for these extensions. We show that the combination of type classes and generalized algebraic data types allows us to express a number of interesting properties which are desired by programmers. We support type checking based on a novel constraint solver. Our results show that our system is practical and greatly extends the expressive power of languages such as Haskell and ML. 1

Abstract. We have built the first family of tagless interpretations for a higher-order typed object language in a typed metalanguage (Haskell or ML) that require no dependent types, generalized algebraic data types, or postprocessing to eliminate tags. The statically type-preserving interpretations include an evaluator, a compiler (or staged evaluator), a partial evaluator, and call-by-name and call-by-value CPS transformers. Our main idea is to encode HOAS using cogen functions rather than data constructors. In other words, we represent object terms not in an initial algebra but using the coalgebraic structure of the λ-calculus. Our representation also simulates inductive maps from types to types, which are required for typed partial evaluation and CPS transformations. Our encoding of an object term abstracts over the various ways to interpret it, yet statically assures that the interpreters never get stuck. To achieve self-interpretation and show Jones-optimality, we relate this exemplar of higher-rank and higher-kind polymorphism to plugging a term into a context of let-polymorphic bindings. It should also be possible to define languages with a highly refined syntactic type structure. Ideally, such a treatment should be metacircular, in the sense that the type structure used in the defined language should be adequate for the defining language. John Reynolds [28] 1

Gentzen's Hauptsatz -- cut elimination theorem -- in sequent calculi reveals a fundamental property on logic connectives in various logics such as classical logic and intuitionistic logic. In this paper, we implement a procedure in Haskell to perform cut elimination for intuitionistic sequent calculus, where we use types to guarantee that the procedure can only return a cut-free proof of the same sequent when given a proof of a sequent that may contain cuts. The contribution of the paper is two-fold. On the one hand, we present an interesting (and somewhat unexpected) application of the current type system of Haskell, illustrating through a concrete example how some typical use of dependent types can be simulated in Haskell. On the other hand, we identify several problematic issues with such a simulation technique and then suggest some approaches to addressing these issues in Haskell.