Documentation

A basic dependent sum type; the first component is a tag that specifies the type of the second; for example, think of a GADT such as:

data Tag a where
   AString :: Tag String
   AnInt   :: Tag Int

Then, we have the following valid expressions of type Applicative f => DSum Tag f:

AString ==> "hello!"
AnInt   ==> 42

And we can write functions that consume DSum Tag f values by matching, such as:

toString :: DSum Tag Identity -> String
toString (AString :=> Identity str) = str
toString (AnInt   :=> Identity int) = show int

By analogy to the (key => value) construction for dictionary entries in many dynamic languages, we use (key :=> value) as the constructor for dependent sums. The :=> and ==> operators have very low precedence and bind to the right, so if the Tag GADT is extended with an additional constructor Rec :: Tag (DSum Tag Identity), then Rec ==> AnInt ==> 3 + 4 is parsed as would be expected (Rec ==> (AnInt ==> (3 + 4))) and has type DSum Identity Tag. Its precedence is just above that of $, so foo bar $ AString ==> "eep" is equivalent to foo bar (AString ==> "eep").