Skip to content

safe alternatives to void and as #1420

@road21

Description

@road21

Package tofu.syntax provides helpful syntax extensions, that cats-core lacks. This is suggestion to add few more extension methods.
The problem is that default cats-core extension methods .void and .as from Functor are error-prone.

For example, we have the following piece of code:

def get[F[_]]: F[String] = ???

def consume(s: String): String = ???

def getAndConsume[F[_]: Applicative]: F[Unit] =
  get.map(consume).void

At some point of time, we need to make consume method effectfull.
So, we replace it to something like:

def consume[F[_]: Applicative](s: String): F[String] = ???

The problem is that getAndConsume still compiles, it's easy to forget to fix it.

The idea is to add methods .void_/.as_ to tofu.syntax that check this.
The implementation could be something like:

// evidence that A <: F[B]
trait SubtypeOfSome[A, F[_]]:
  type B

object SubtypeOfSome:
  type Aux[A, F[_], _B] = SubtypeOfSome[A, F] { type B = _B }

  given [F[_], _B, A <: F[_B]]: SubtypeOfSome.Aux[A, F, _B] =
    new SubtypeOfSome[A, F]:
      type B = _B

extension [F[_], A](fa: F[A])
  def void_(using Functor[F], NotGiven[SubtypeOfSome[A, F]]): F[Unit] =
    Functor[F].void(fa)

  def as_[B](b: B)(using Functor[F], NotGiven[SubtypeOfSome[A, F]]): F[Unit] =
    Functor[F].as(fa, b)

This solution doesn't help in cases like ReaderT[IO, Ctx, IO[???]], but works in most cases.

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions