Polymorphic constraint

Question

I have some contrived type:

{-# LANGUAGE DeriveFunctor #-}

data T a = T a deriving (Functor)

... and that type is the instance of some contrived class:

class C t where
    toInt :: t -> Int

instance C (T a) where
    toInt _ = 0

How can I express in a function constraint that T a is an instance of some class for all a ?

For example, consider the following function:

f t = toInt $ fmap Left t

Intuitively, I would expect the above function to work since toInt works on T a for all a , but I cannot express that in the type. This does not work:

f :: (Functor t, C (t a)) => t a -> Int

... because when we apply fmap the type has become Either ab . I can't fix this using:

f :: (Functor t, C (t (Either a b))) => t a -> Int

... because b does not represent a universally quantified variable. Nor can I say:

f :: (Functor t, C (t x)) => t a -> Int

... or use forall x to suggest that the constraint is valid for all x .

So my question is if there is a way to say that a constraint is polymorphic over some of its type variables.

Answer 1

Using the constraints package:

{-# LANGUAGE FlexibleContexts, ConstraintKinds, DeriveFunctor, TypeOperators #-}

import Data.Constraint
import Data.Constraint.Forall

data T a = T a deriving (Functor)

class C t where
    toInt :: t -> Int

instance C (T a) where
    toInt _ = 0

f :: ForallF C T => T a -> Int
f t = (toInt $ fmap Left t) \\ (instF :: ForallF C T :- C (T (Either a b)))