Haskell: Creating Type Classes for Zippers

Question

So I've been reading a bit about the Zipper pattern in Haskell (and other functional languages, I suppose) to traverse and modify a data structure, and I thought that this would be a good chance for me to hone my skills at creating type classes in Haskell, since the class could present a common traversal interface for me to write code to, independent of the data structure traversed.

I thought I'd probably need two classes - one for the root data structure, and one for the special data structure created to traverse the first:

module Zipper where

class Zipper z where
  go'up :: z -> Maybe z
  go'down :: z -> Maybe z
  go'left :: z -> Maybe z
  go'right :: z -> Maybe z

class Zippable t where
  zipper :: (Zipper z) => t -> z
  get :: (Zipper z) => z -> t
  put :: (Zipper z) => z -> t -> z

But when I tried these with some simple datastructures like a list:

-- store a path through a list, with preceding elements stored in reverse
data ListZipper a = ListZipper { preceding :: [a], following :: [a] }

instance Zipper (ListZipper a) where
  go'up ListZipper { preceding = [] } = Nothing
  go'up ListZipper { preceding = a:ps, following = fs } = 
      Just $ ListZipper { preceding = ps, following = a:fs }
  go'down ListZipper { following = [] } = Nothing
  go'down ListZipper { preceding = ps, following = a:fs } = 
      Just $ ListZipper { preceding = a:ps, following = fs }
  go'left _ = Nothing
  go'right _ = Nothing

instance Zippable ([a]) where
  zipper as = ListZipper { preceding = [], following = as }
  get = following
  put z as = z { following = as }

Or a binary tree:

-- binary tree that only stores values at the leaves
data Tree a = Node { left'child :: Tree a, right'child :: Tree a } | Leaf a
-- store a path down a Tree, with branches not taken stored in reverse
data TreeZipper a = TreeZipper { branches :: [Either (Tree a) (Tree a)], subtree :: Tree a }

instance Zipper (TreeZipper a) where
  go'up TreeZipper { branches = [] } = Nothing
  go'up TreeZipper { branches = (Left l):bs, subtree = r } =  
      Just $ TreeZipper { branches = bs, subtree = Node { left'child = l, right'child = r } }
  go'up TreeZipper { branches = (Right r):bs, subtree = l } =  
      Just $ TreeZipper { branches = bs, subtree = Node { left'child = l, right'child = r } }
  go'down TreeZipper { subtree = Leaf a } = Nothing
  go'down TreeZipper { branches = bs, subtree = Node { left'child = l, right'child = r } } =
      Just $ TreeZipper { branches = (Right r):bs, subtree = l }
  go'left TreeZipper { branches = [] } = Nothing
  go'left TreeZipper { branches = (Right r):bs } = Nothing
  go'left TreeZipper { branches = (Left l):bs, subtree = r } =
      Just $ TreeZipper { branches = (Right r):bs, subtree = l }
  go'right TreeZipper { branches = [] } = Nothing
  go'right TreeZipper { branches = (Left l):bs } = Nothing
  go'right TreeZipper { branches = (Right r):bs, subtree = l } =
      Just $ TreeZipper { branches = (Left l):bs, subtree = r }

instance Zippable (Tree a) where
  zipper t = TreeZipper { branches = [], subtree = t }
  get TreeZipper { subtree = s } = s
  put z s = z { subtree = s }

I couldn't get it to compile, I'd just get a lot of errors like this for each of my Zippable instance definitions:

Zipper.hs:28:14:
    Couldn't match expected type `z'
           against inferred type `ListZipper a'
      `z' is a rigid type variable bound by
          the type signature for `zipper' at Zipper.hs:10:20
    In the expression: ListZipper {preceding = [], following = as}
    In the definition of `zipper':
        zipper as = ListZipper {preceding = [], following = as}
    In the definition for method `zipper'

So I'm not sure where to go from here. I suspect that my issue is that I'm trying to bind these two instances together, when the (Zipper z) => declaration just wants z to be any Zipper.

Answer 1

(Aside: your go'up naming scheme is... inventive. Haskell style is usually camelCase.)

You're on the right track. What you've written is equivalent to the below.

{-# LANGUAGE RankNTypes #-}
instance Zippable [a] where
    zipper = ... :: forall z. (Zipper z) => [a] -> z
    get = ... :: forall z. (Zipper z) => z -> [a]
    set = ... :: forall z. (Zipper z) => z -> [a] -> z

(For all types z, given Zipper z, there exists a zipper :: [a] -> z.)

You're tring to define zipper = ... :: [a] -> ListZipper a, which is clearly too restrictive.

Your code will typecheck with the following minimal changes:

{-# LANGUAGE MultiParamTypeClasses #-}
class (Zipper z) => Zippable z t where
    zipper :: t -> z
    get :: z -> t
    set :: z -> t -> z
instance Zippable (ListZipper a) [a] where
    ...
instance Zippable (TreeZipper a) (Tree a) where
    ...

See multi-parameter type classes. It's a post-Haskell'98 extension, but Haskell implementations widely support it.

Answer 2

You can also use type synonym families instead of multi-parameter type classes and functional dependencies. In cases like these they offer a cleaner and easier-to-understand solution. In that case the class and instance would become:

class Zippable t where
  type ZipperType t :: *
  enter :: t -> ZipperType t
  focus :: ZipperType t -> t

instance Zippable [a] where
  type ZipperType [a] = ListZipper a
  enter = ...
  focus = ...

Fun with type functions is an excellent introduction to type synonym families for people already familiar with Haskell. I also wrote an article on how type synonym families can often be used instead of functional dependencies a while ago.

Hope this helps!