ekmett / ekmett/reflection

"unreify" combinator

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Haskell
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Description

Hi, I'm playing around with reflection for the first time in some production code (eep) and I found a need for this function...

```haskell
unreify :: forall a f r. (forall s. f s -> r) -> (forall s. Reifies s a => f s) -> r
unreify k x = reify (error "unreify: impossible?!" :: a) (\p -> k (x `asProxyOf` p))

asProxyOf :: f s -> Proxy s -> f s
asProxyOf x _ = x
```

My use-case is trying to `Show` a data type that looks like this:

```haskell
data Foo = Foo (forall s. Reifies s Bar => What s)

instance Show (What s) -- doesn't need a 'Reifies s Bar'

instance Show Foo where
show (Foo x) = ???
```

In `???`, I have an `x :: Reifies s Bar => What s`, and I thus I need to pick some `s` such that `Reifies s Bar` (i.e. `reify` a `Bar`), but I don't have a `Bar` around, and I also know that I don't need one to show a `What s` (because I can provide a `forall s. What s -> String` function - `show`!)

I was wondering if this combinator makes sense, not necessarily for the library proper, but more as some sort of proof by parametricity that the `undefined` can't possibly be forced.

Thanks!

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