How to emulate a dependent type in Scala

Question

I'm trying to define a generic residue class ring in Scala. A residue class ring is defined by some base ring (e.g. the integers) and a modulus (e.g. two), which is a value from the base ring. Both rings and their elements are objects, hence the type of the modulus would normally be a dependent type, depending on the base ring. I understand this isn't allowed in Scala (for good reasons), so I'm trying to emulate it by approximating the type and doing a runtime check when the residue class ring is constructed.

The definition of ResidueClassRing is accepted without error, however, Scala doesn't let me instantiate it, for the argument two I get the error message

type mismatch;
found   : dependenttypetest.DependentTypeTest.two.type 
(with underlying type dependenttypetest.Integers.Integer)  
required: dependenttypetest.EuclideanRing#E

Am I doing something wrong? Could this be a bug in the Scala type checker? Is there a better way to define ResidueClassRing?

This is with Scala 2.8.0 in the Eclipse IDE for Helios. The problem already occurred for 2.7.x. Here is a simplified version of the code:

package dependenttypetest


class EuclideanRing
{
  thisRing =>

  type E <: EuclideanRingElement;

  def one: E;

  trait EuclideanRingElement 
  {
    def ring = thisRing;

    def +(b: E): E;
    def %(b: E): E;
  }
}


object Integers extends EuclideanRing
{
  type E = Integer;

  val one: Integer = new Integer(1);

  class Integer(n: Int) extends EuclideanRingElement
  {
    val intValue: Int = n;
    def +(b: Integer): Integer = new Integer(intValue + b.intValue);
    def %(b: Integer): Integer = new Integer(intValue % b.intValue);
  }
}


class ResidueClassRing (val baseRing : EuclideanRing, m : EuclideanRing#E) 
{
  val modulus: baseRing.E = 
    m match {
    case e: baseRing.E if m.ring == baseRing => e;
    case _ => throw new IllegalArgumentException("modulus not from base ring");
    };

  type E = ResidueClassRingElement;

  def one: E = new ResidueClassRingElement(baseRing.one);

  class ResidueClassRingElement (e : baseRing.E)
  {
    def representative: baseRing.E = e % modulus;

    def +(b: E) = new ResidueClassRingElement(
      this.representative + b.representative); 
  }
}


object DependentTypeTest extends Application
{
  val two = new Integers.Integer(2);
  val mod2ring = new ResidueClassRing(Integers, two);

  println(mod2ring.one + mod2ring.one);
}

Answer 1

UPDATE: Added IntRing to clarify changes in trait Ring

The problem seems to be that the type inferencer does not automatically pick the most specific type which is what you need in your case. In addition to that you cannot have a dependent type argument in the same parameter list as the defining type.

What you could to do is pull the instance that the type depends on in the outer scope (which is done in the Rings class) and to force the compiler to pick the most specific type when instantiating the Rings class:

trait Ring {

  type Element <: EuclideanRingElement

  def one: Element

  // for convenience could be defined anywhere of course
  lazy val rings: Rings[this.type] = new Rings[this.type](this)

  trait EuclideanRingElement {
    def +(e: Element): Element
    def %(e: Element): Element
  }
}

class Rings[R <: Ring](val base: R) {

  class ResidueClassRing(m: base.Element) {

    def one = new Element(base.one)

    class Element(e: base.Element) {
      def repr = e % m
      def +(that: Element) = new Element(this.repr + that.repr)
    }
  }
}

object IntRing extends Ring {

val one = new Element(1)

  class Element(val n: Int) extends EuclideanRingElement {
    def +(that: Element) = new Element(this.n + that.n)
    def %(that: Element) = new Element(this.n % that.n)
    override def toString = n formatted "Int(%d)"
  }
}

Now you can use it like this:

scala> import IntRing._
import IntRing._

scala> val two = new Element(2)
two: IntRing.Element = Int(2)


scala> val r2 = new rings.ResidueClassRing(two)
r2: IntRing.rings.ResidueClassRing = Rings$ResidueClassRing@4b5075f9

Answer 2

This seems to work, but I couldn't get rid of the cast when calculating representative:

package dependenttypetest

abstract class EuclideanRing{
  thisRing =>
  type E <: EuclideanRingElement;
  def one: E;
  trait EuclideanRingElement
  {
    def ring = thisRing;

    def +(b: E): E;
    def %(b: E): E;
  }
}

class Integers extends EuclideanRing {
  type E = Integer;
  val one: Integer = new Integer(1);
  class Integer(n: Int) extends EuclideanRingElement
  {
    val intValue: Int = n;
    def +(b: Integer): Integer = new Integer(intValue + b.intValue);
    def %(b: Integer): Integer = new Integer(intValue % b.intValue);
    override def toString = "Int" + intValue
  }
}

object Integers extends Integers 

class ResidueClassRing[ER <: EuclideanRing] (modulus : ER#E) {
  val baseRing = modulus.ring
  type E = ResidueClassRingElement;
  def one: E = new ResidueClassRingElement(baseRing.one);

  class ResidueClassRingElement (e : baseRing.E)
  {
    def representative = e % modulus.asInstanceOf[baseRing.E];
    def +(b: E) = new ResidueClassRingElement(
      this.representative + b.representative);
    override def toString = "RC(" + representative + ")"
  }
}

object DependentTypeTest extends Application {
  val two =  new Integers.Integer(2);
  val mod2ring = new ResidueClassRing[Integers](two)

  println(mod2ring.one + mod2ring.one)
}

BTW: Be careful with the Application trait, it's rightfully deprecated.