Is it possible to get all contexts of a Traversable lazily?

Question

lens offers holesOf, which is a somewhat more general and powerful version of this hypothetical function:

holesList :: Traversable t
          =>         


        

Answer 1

Your existing solution calls runMag once for every branch in the tree defined by Ap constructors.

I haven't profiled anything, but as runMag is itself recursive, this might slow things down in a large tree.

An alternative would be to tie the knot so you're only (in effect) calling runMag once for the entire tree:

data Mag a b c where
  One :: a -> Mag a b b
  Pure :: c -> Mag a b c
  Ap :: Mag a b (c -> d) -> Mag a b c -> Mag a b d

instance Functor (Mag a b) where
  fmap = Ap . Pure

instance Applicative (Mag a b) where
  pure = Pure
  (<*>) = Ap

holes :: forall t a. Traversable t => t a -> t (a, a -> t a)
holes = \t -> 
    let m :: Mag a b (t b)
        m = traverse One t 
    in fst $ go id m m
  where
    go :: (x -> y)
       -> Mag a (a, a -> y) z
       -> Mag a a x
       -> (z, x)
    go f (One a)    (One _)    = ((a, f), a)
    go _ (Pure z)   (Pure x)   = (z, x)
    go f (Ap mg mi) (Ap mh mj) = 
      let ~(g, h) = go (f . ($j)) mg mh
          ~(i, j) = go (f .   h ) mi mj
      in (g i, h j)
    go _ _ _ = error "only called with same value twice, constructors must match"