Implementation of Point, Velocity and Acceleration in Haskell

Question

I'm trying to implement point, velocity and acceleration types.

They should be connected by some derive function which:

• takes time and velocity and returns a point increment;
• takes time and acceleration and returns a velocity increment.

In pseudocode, it should look like this:

derive :: Time -> Velocity -> Point
derive :: Time -> Acceleration -> Velocity

Time is a type representing a time as floating value.

Point, Velocity and Acceleration are vectors.

So I don't want to

• mix time values with any other floating values;
• mix vectors representing points with velocity vectors and etc.

I came up with following solution.

{-# LANGUAGE KindSignatures, DataKinds, TypeOperators #-}
import Control.Comonad
import GHC.TypeLits
import Linear
import Linear.V2
-- Type of real numbers.
type R = Double
-- Type of vectors.
type Vector = V2
-- Wrapper to distinguish time values from other values.
newtype Time a = Time { fromTime :: a }
-- Time is intended to be a wrapper. But to implement a derive function,
-- I need a common way to extract value from wrapper. That's why Time
-- must be a Comonad's instance:
instance Functor Time where
 fmap f = Time . f . fromTime
instance Comonad Time where
 extract = fromTime
 duplicate = Time
{- Type of derivative.
 Type (D r v u a) means a derivation of (u a) by (v a) with rank r.
-}
newtype D (r :: Nat) (v :: * -> *) (u :: * -> *) a = D { fromD :: (u a) }
-- Using type D the point, velocity and acceleration types can be defined:
type Pnt = D 0 Time Vector R
type Vel = D 1 Time Vector R
type Acc = D 2 Time Vector R
-- Even if I don't want to mix points with velocities,
-- I do want them to behave like vectors. So I want
-- them to be Additive:
instance Functor u => Functor (D r v u) where
 fmap f = D . fmap f . fromD
instance Additive u => Additive (D r v u) where
 -- I didn't found a way how to make this Additive instance better.
 -- Applicative instance for (D r v u) doesn't help.
 zero = D $ zero
 x ^+^ y = D $ (fromD x) ^+^ (fromD y)
 x ^-^ y = D $ (fromD x) ^-^ (fromD y)
 lerp a x y = D $ lerp a (fromD x) (fromD y)
 liftU2 f x y = D $ liftU2 f (fromD x) (fromD y)
 liftI2 f x y = D $ liftI2 f (fromD x) (fromD y)
-- Now derive function can be implemented:
derive ::
 (Comonad v, Functor u, Num a) =>
 v a -> D (r + 1) v u a -> D r v u a
derive dv du = D $ (extract dv) *^ (fromD du)

This solution pretty mush does what I want:

• I can't call derive on Pnt;
• derive on Vel returns Pnt;
• derive on Acc returns Vel.

I don't like:

• the way how Additive instance for D r v u is implemented.
• the fact that to derive a vector of real numbes I need to extract time value from a wrapper. It doesn't feel natural.

So ...

• How can I edit an Additive instance for D r v u to avoid using common code with fromD?
• Am I wrong about naturality which I meantioned above; is it ok to use wrappers like Time like I did in derive function?

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Answer 1

Use GeneralizedNewtypeDeriving if you use the same instance as the wrapped type anyway. Together with DeriveFunctor, we can get rid of much boilerplate (comments omitted, changes noted with -- <--):

{-# LANGUAGE KindSignatures, DataKinds, TypeOperators #-}
{-# LANGUAGE GeneralizedNewtypeDeriving, DeriveFunctor #-} -- <--
import Control.Comonad
import GHC.TypeLits
import Linear
import Linear.V2 
type R = Double 
type Vector = V2 
newtype Time a = Time { fromTime :: a } deriving (Functor, Num) -- <--
instance Comonad Time where
 extract = fromTime
 duplicate = Time
newtype D (r :: Nat) (v :: * -> *) (u :: * -> *) a = D { fromD :: (u a) }
 deriving (Functor, Applicative, Additive) -- <--
type Pnt = D 0 Time Vector R
type Vel = D 1 Time Vector R
type Acc = D 2 Time Vector R
derive ::
 (Comonad v, Functor u, Num a) =>
 v a -> D (r + 1) v u a -> D r v u a
derive dv du = D $ (extract dv) *^ (fromD du)

This immediately gets rid of your Additive problem. Also, now that Time is a Num instance, you can use derive like this:

derive 3 (pure 3 :: Vel)

Unfortunately, Num also contains (*), so you'll be able to multiply time values, which doesn't really make sense in this case. Alas, there is no other way to get fromInteger otherwise.

However, let's have a look at the wrapper, D and derive. The type of derive is a little bit too general. It allows you to do stuff like this:

ghci> import Data.Tree
ghci> derive (Node 10 []) (pure 2 :: D 2 Tree Vector Double)
D {fromD = V2 20.0 20.0} -- if we add Show to D's instances

Could this be a valid use case? Who knows. Is it likely to be a valid use case? Rather not. Get back to the original inspiration for derive:

derive :: Time -> Velocity -> Point
derive :: Time -> Acceleration -> Velocity

We expect the first argument always to be some kind of time measurement. We also expect the vector to be conform to the time's unit(*). From this point of view, it makes sense to encode the Time in D. However, this yields the question why the other side of the spacetime, space, isn't encoded in D too.

^{(*) strictly speaking, we're not encoding time's unit but only type.}

Either way, you probably want to allow only Time values. Furthermore, you want to make clear what unit Time uses. We could use a phantom type, e.g.

{-# LANGUAGE DataKinds, KindSignatures, GeneralizedNumtypeDeriving #-}
data TimeUnit = Milliseconds | Seconds | Minutes | Hours
newtype Time (* :: TimeUnit) a = Time {fromTime :: a} deriving (Show, Num)

which makes sure that we don't mix different times:

> (Time 3 :: Time 'Seconds Double) + (Time 10 :: Time 'Minutes Double)
Couldn't match type ‘'Minutes’ with ‘'Seconds’
Expected type: Time 'Seconds Double
 Actual type: Time 'Minutes Double
In the second argument of ‘(+)’, namely
 ‘(Time 10 :: Time Minutes Double)’
In the expression:
 (Time 3 :: Time Seconds Double) + (Time 10 :: Time Minutes Double)

But that's out of scope for this review. Instead, we can simply say that Time's unit is seconds, disallow creating Time values with its data constructor, and provide some helper functions:

module Movement 
 ( Time, getSeconds
 , seconds, minutes
 , ...
 )
where
newtype Time a = Time { getSeconds :: a }
seconds :: Num a => a -> Time a
seconds = Time
minutes :: Num a => a -> Time a
minutes = seconds . (60 *)
derive :: (Functor u, Num a) => Time a -> D (r + 1) u a -> D r u a
derive (Time s) du = D $ s *^ (fromD du)

Alright. Let's reflect all changes:

• used GeneralizedNewtypeDeriving to get rid of boilerplate (major change)
• instead of allowing general Comonads, only allow Time (*)
• removed Time from D, since derive fixes it (*)
• make the unit of time explicit with "smart" constructors and remove the Time data constructor from the exports.

^{(*) You can still use those techniques internally, but a public interface should be hard to use wrong if possible. After all, that's the reason you're using r :: Nat and derive :: ... -> D (r + 1) ... -> D r, right?}

We end up with the following code:

{-# LANGUAGE KindSignatures, DataKinds, TypeOperators #-}
{-# LANGUAGE GeneralizedNewtypeDeriving, DeriveFunctor #-}
module Movement 
 ( Time, getSeconds
 , R, Vector, 
 , D(..), Pnt, Vel, Acc
 , seconds, minutes
 , derive
 )
where
import GHC.TypeLits
import Linear
import Linear.V2 
type R = Double 
type Vector = V2 
newtype Time a = Time { getSeconds :: a } deriving (Functor)
newtype D (r :: Nat) (u :: * -> *) a = D { fromD :: (u a) }
 deriving (Functor, Applicative, Additive, Show)
type Pnt = D 0 Vector R
type Vel = D 1 Vector R
type Acc = D 2 Vector R
seconds :: Num a => a -> Time a
seconds = Time
minutes :: Num a => a -> Time a
minutes = seconds . (60 *)
derive :: (Functor u, Num a) => Time a -> D (r + 1) u a -> D r u a
derive (Time s) du = D $ s *^ (fromD du)

Am I wrong about naturality which I meantioned above; is it ok to use wrappers like Time like I did in derive function?

Using wrappers is fine. For example, the UniversalTime in the time package is just a wrapper around Rational. And although it doesn't export its constructor, DiffTime is also just a newtype of Pico.

Maybe it feels more natural with the helper functions:

someCalculation :: Vec
someCalculation =
 let time = seconds 120
 acc = D (V2 10 10) -- (*)
 in derive time acc

^{(*) This example will probably inspire you to provide Num a => a -> a -> D r V2 a functions.}

• user21974: Thanks for review! Actually, I tried to make D general enough to do not stick to time only. But I didn't mention that in question and I don't see how could I practically use it. I like the way how you modified time. And generalized deriving shorted code pretty well leaving only reasonable parts.