Normally, the only way Agda can pick something for you is when it is uniquely determined by the context. In the case of EqReasoning
, there isn't usually enough information to pin down the Setoid
, even worse actually: you could have two different Setoid
s over the same Carrier
and _≈_
(consider for example two definitionally unequal proofs of trans
itivity in the isEquivalence
field).
However, Agda does allow special form of implicit arguments, which can be filled as long as there is only one value of the desired type. These are known as instance arguments (think instance as in Haskell type class instances).
To demonstrate roughly how this works:
postulate
A : Set
a : A
Now, instance arguments are wrapped in double curly braces {{}}
:
elem : {{x : A}} → A
elem {{x}} = x
If we decide to later use elem
somewhere, Agda will check for any values of type A
in scope and if there's only one of them, it'll fill that one in for {{x : A}}
. If we added:
postulate
b : A
Agda will now complain that:
Resolve instance argument _x_7 : A. Candidates: [a : A, b : A]
Because Agda already allows you to perform computations on type level, instance arguments are deliberately limited in what they can do, namely Agda won't perform recursive search to fill them in. Consider for example:
eq : ... → IsEquivalence _≈_ → IsEquivalence (Eq _≈_)
where Eq
is Data.Maybe.Eq
mentioned in your question. When you then require Agda to fill in an instance argument of a type IsEquivalence (Eq _≈_)
, it won't try to find something of type IsEquivalence _≈_
and apply eq
to it.
With that out of the way, let's take a look at what could work. However, bear in mind that all this stands on unification and as such you might need to push it in the right direction here and there (and if the types you are dealing with become complex, unification might require you to give it so many directions that it won't be worth it in the end).
Personally, I find instance arguments a bit fragile and I usually avoid them (and from a quick check, it would seem that so does the standard library), but your experience might vary.
Anyways, here we go. I constructed a (totally nonsensical) example to demonstrate how to do it. Some boilerplate first:
open import Data.Maybe
open import Data.Nat
open import Relation.Binary
import Relation.Binary.EqReasoning as EqR
To make this example self-contained, I wrote some kind of Setoid
with natural numbers as its carrier:
data _≡ℕ_ : ℕ → ℕ → Set where
z≡z : 0 ≡ℕ 0
s≡s : ∀ {m n} → m ≡ℕ n → suc m ≡ℕ suc n
ℕ-setoid : Setoid _ _
ℕ-setoid = record
{ _≈_ = _≡ℕ_
; isEquivalence = record
{ refl = refl
; sym = sym
; trans = trans
}
}
where
refl : Reflexive _≡ℕ_
refl {zero} = z≡z
refl {suc _} = s≡s refl
sym : Symmetric _≡ℕ_
sym z≡z = z≡z
sym (s≡s p) = s≡s (sym p)
trans : Transitive _≡ℕ_
trans z≡z q = q
trans (s≡s p) (s≡s q) = s≡s (trans p q)
Now, the EqReasoning
module is parametrized over a Setoid
, so usually you do something like this:
open EqR ℕ-setoid
However, we'd like to have the Setoid
parameter to be implicit (instance) rather than explicit, so we define and open a dummy module:
open module Dummy {c ℓ} {{s : Setoid c ℓ}} = EqR s
And we can write this simple proof:
idʳ : ∀ n → n ≡ℕ (n + 0)
idʳ 0 = z≡z
idʳ (suc n) = begin
suc n ≈⟨ s≡s (idʳ n) ⟩
suc (n + 0) ∎
Notice that we never had to specify ℕ-setoid
, the instance argument picked it up because it was the only type-correct value.
Now, let's spice it up a bit. We'll add Data.Maybe.setoid
into the mix. Again, because instance arguments do not perform a recursive search, we'll have to define the setoid ourselves:
Maybeℕ-setoid = setoid ℕ-setoid
_≡M_ = Setoid._≈_ Maybeℕ-setoid
I'm going to postulate few stupid things just to demonstrate that Agda indeed picks correct setoids:
postulate
comm : ∀ m n → (m + n) ≡ℕ (n + m)
eq0 : ∀ n → n ≡ℕ 0
eq∅ : just 0 ≡M nothing
lem : ∀ n → just (n + 0) ≡M nothing
lem n = begin
just (n + 0) ≈⟨ just
(begin
n + 0 ≈⟨ comm n 0 ⟩
n ≈⟨ eq0 n ⟩
0 ∎
)⟩
just 0 ≈⟨ eq∅ ⟩
nothing ∎