List of showables: OOP beats Haskell?

Question

I want to build a list of different things which have one property in common, namely, they could be turned into string. The object-oriented approach is straightforward: defi

Answer 1

If you really, really want, you can use a heterogeneous list. This approach really isn't useful for Show, because it has a single method and all you can do is apply it, but if your class has multiple methods this could be useful.

{-# LANGUAGE PolyKinds, KindSignatures, GADTs, TypeFamilies
   , TypeOperators, DataKinds, ConstraintKinds, RankNTypes, PatternSynonyms  #-} 

import Data.List (intercalate)
import GHC.Prim (Constraint)

infixr 5 :&
data HList xs where 
  None :: HList '[] 
  (:&) :: a -> HList bs -> HList (a ': bs) 

-- | Constraint All c xs holds if c holds for all x in xs
type family All (c :: k -> Constraint) xs :: Constraint where 
  All c '[] = () 
  All c (x ': xs) = (c x, All c xs) 

-- | The list whose element types are unknown, but known to satisfy
--   a class predicate. 
data CList c where CL :: All c xs => HList xs -> CList c  

cons :: c a => a -> CList c -> CList c
cons a (CL xs) = CL (a :& xs) 

empty :: CList c 
empty = CL None 

uncons :: (forall a . c a => a -> CList c -> r) -> r -> CList c -> r 
uncons _ n (CL None) = n 
uncons c n (CL (x :& xs)) = c x (CL xs) 

foldrC :: (forall a . c a => a -> r -> r) -> r -> CList c -> r 
foldrC f z = go where go = uncons (\x -> f x . go) z 

showAll :: CList Show -> String 
showAll l = "[" ++ intercalate "," (foldrC (\x xs -> show x : xs) [] l) ++ "]" 

test = putStrLn $ showAll $ CL $ 
  1 :& 
  'a' :& 
  "foo" :& 
  [2.3, 2.5 .. 3] :& 
  None