Question

Having a background in Haskell I am currently trying to get familiar with Scala.

I encountered some problems trying to translate a small, extensible expression language from Haskell into Scala. The underlying issue of writing a data type that is extensible with both new data-variants and operations is commonly known as the expression problem.

My original solution in Haskell uses type classes and instance declarations with constraints. The base of my expression is defined as follows:

module Expr where

class Expr e where
 eval :: e -> Integer

data Lit = Lit Integer
instance Expr Lit where
  eval (Lit l) = l

data Plus a b = (Expr a, Expr b) => Plus a b
instance (Expr a, Expr b) => Expr (Plus a b) where
  eval (Plus x y) = (eval x) + (eval y)

Then, I have one data-extension that adds multiplication:

module ExprWithMul where
import Expr

data Mul a b = (Expr a, Expr b) =>  Mul a b
instance (Expr a, Expr b) => Expr (Mul a b) where
  eval (Mul x y) = (eval x) * (eval y)

Let’s take a pretty-printer as an operational extension:

module FormatExpr where
import Expr

class (Expr t) => FormatExpr t where
  format :: t -> String

instance FormatExpr Lit where
  format (Lit l) = show l

instance (FormatExpr a, FormatExpr b) => FormatExpr (Plus a b) where
  format (Plus x y) = "(" ++ (format x) ++ "+" ++ (format y) ++ ")"

And, finally, in the fourth module the two independent extensions can be combined:

module FormatExprWithMult where
import FormatExpr
import ExprWithMul

instance (FormatExpr a, FormatExpr b) => FormatExpr (Mul a b) where
  format (Mul x y) = "(" ++ (format x) ++ "*" ++ (format y) ++ ")"

Now for my problem: Usually type classes from haskell are translated to the concept-pattern with implicits in Scala. This is how far I got:

abstract class Expr[A] { // this corresponds to a type class
  def eval(e:A): Int;
}

case class Lit(v: Int)
implicit object ExprLit extends Expr[Lit] {
 def eval(e: Lit) = x.v;
}
case class Plus[A,B] (e1: A, e2: B) (implicit c1: Expr[A], c2: Expr[B])

Here I am stuck with implementing the implicit object for Plus. How do I declare an implicit object with type parameters and constraints?

I know that there are other solution for the expression problem in Scala, I am however interested in this version in particular.

Thank you all for reading my somewhat lengthy question.

Answer 1

First attempt (flawed):

case class Plus[A,B] (e1: A, e2: B) (implicit c1: Expr[A], c2: Expr[B]) {
    implicit object ExprPlus extends Expr[Plus[A, B]] { 
        def eval(p:Plus[A, B]) = c1.eval(p.e1) + c2.eval(p.e2)
    }
}

Edit 1:

The above isn’t sufficiently powerful (you can’t add two Plus expressions), and the implicit witness need not be defined inside of the Plus case class… try this instead:

case class Plus[A,B] (e1: A, e2: B) (implicit val c1: Expr[A], c2: Expr[B])
implicit def ExprPlus[A, B](implicit c1: Expr[A], c2: Expr[B]) = 
    new Expr[Plus[A, B]] { 
        def eval(p:Plus[A, B]) = c1.eval(p.e1) + c2.eval(p.e2)
    }

Edit 2:

Here’s a (perhaps) slightly more idiomatic version:

case class Plus[A: Expr, B: Expr] (e1: A, e2: B)
implicit def ExprPlus[A: Expr, B: Expr] = new Expr[Plus[A, B]] {
    def eval(p:Plus[A, B]) = implicitly[Expr[A]].eval(p.e1) + 
                             implicitly[Expr[B]].eval(p.e2)
}