[racket] Polymorphic types and curried functions

You cannot write macros that expand within types (yet). 

But you can write macros for : like this: 

#lang typed/racket

(require (for-template (only-in typed/racket All ->)))

;; syntax
;; (:/c  f (α β γ) (-> A B (-> C (-> D E))))
;; ==>
;; (: f (All (α) (-> A B (All (β) (-> C (All (γ) (-> D E)))))))
(define-syntax (:/c stx)
  (syntax-case stx (All/c)
    [(_ f (A ...) τ) (let ([σ (All/c #'(A ...) #'τ)]) #`(: f #,σ))]))

;; [List-of Syntax/id] Syntax -> Syntax 
;; distributes type variables along the right-most spine of a curried -> type 
;; given: 
;;  (α β γ) (-> A B (-> C (-> D E)))
;; wanted: 
;; (All (α) (-> A B (All (β) (-> C (All (γ) (-> D E))))))
(define-for-syntax (All/c α* C)
  (syntax-case α* ()
    [() C]
    [(α) #`(All (α) #,C)]
    [(α β ...) 
     (syntax-case C ()
       [(-> A ... B)
        (let ([rst (All/c #'(β ...) #'B)])
          #`(All (α) (-> A ... #,rst)))]
       [(_ (α ...) A) #'(All (α ...) A)])]))

;; -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

(:/c compare-projection (A B) (-> (-> A A Boolean) (-> (-> B A) (-> B B Boolean))))
(define (((compare-projection a<) b->a) b1 b2)
  (a< (b->a b1) (b->a b2)))

(define symbol<? 
  ((compare-projection bytes<?) (compose string->bytes/utf-8 symbol->string)))

(symbol<? 'a 'b)



On Nov 12, 2014, at 8:56 PM, Jack Firth wrote:

> I've been mucking around with Typed Racket some and was writing a polymorphic curried function when something I found counter-intuitive popped up. I had this function:
> 
>     (: compare-projection (All (A B) (-> (-> A A Boolean) (-> (-> B A) (-> B B Boolean)))))
>     (define (((compare-projection a<) b->a) b1 b2)
>       (a< (b->a b1) (b->a b2)))
> 
> The purpose of this function was to let me compare things by converting them to some other type with a known comparison function, so something like symbol<? (which is defined in terms of bytes<? according to the docs) could be implemented directly like this:
> 
>     (define symbol<? ((compare-projection bytes<?) (compose string->bytes/utf-8 symbol->string)))
> 
> The problem I was having was that the first initial argument, bytes<?, only specifies the first type variable A. The other type variable B can still be anything, as it depends on what function you use to map things to type A in the returned function. The All type therefore assumes Any type for B, making the returned type non-polymorphic.
> 
> I expected something like currying to occur in the polymorphic type, since the returned type is a function. I thought that if a polymorphic function 1) returns a function and 2) doesn't have enough information from it's arguments to determine all it's type variables, that it should then automatically return a polymorphic function. In other words, I thought this type would be equivalent to this automatically:
> 
>     (All (A) (-> (-> A A Boolean) (All (B) (-> (-> B A) (-> B B Boolean)))))
> 
> This is most certainly not the case, though I wonder - would it be terribly difficult to define some sort of polymorphic type constructor that *did* behave like this? I'm fiddling with some macros for syntactic sugar of type definitions and it would be a boon to not have to worry about this.
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