Towards Getting Generic Programming Ready for Prime Time

Abstract

This thesis aims at making Datatype Generic Programming more useful in practice. We extend the fixed-point view as introduced by PolyP in order to support systems of mutually recursive datatypes. The new improved view allows us to define generic functions that were previously usable only on regular datatypes. Such examples of generic functions include the zipper, generic rewriting and fold. This thesis explores the problem of generic rewriting and that of extending a datatype with a meta-variable case without modifying its definition. We also compare various approaches to generic programming in Haskell. Finally, we apply generic programming to the problem of generating well-typed terms.