# 2.1 The Kind System

A kind is a type of types. Compile-time is runtime for the compiler, and values the compiler runs computation on are types.

## 2.1.1 The Kind of “Types”

Roughly, a “type” are type-level terms, a subset of which are “value types”, which can be inhabited by runtime values and correspond to the Haskell kind * or Type. For example Maybe is a type, but not a Type, because it has kind Type -> Type.

## 2.1.2 Arrow Kinds

Higher-kinded types are type constructors. Maybe is an HKT, because its kind is Type -> Type.

## Exercise 2.1.3 (i)

Show has kind Type -> Constraint

## Exercise 2.1.3 (ii)

Functor has kind (Type -> Type) -> Constraint, since it operates on unary type constructors (like [], Maybe etc.).

## Exercise 2.1.3 (iii)

Monad has kind (Type -> Type) -> Constraint

## Exercise 2.1.3 (iv)

The definition of MonadTrans is:

class MonadTrans t where
lift :: Monad m => m a -> t m a

From the class declaration, which must be a Constraint, we can see that MonadTrans has kind T -> Constraint, where T is the kind of the t type variable.

We can expand the kind of T by noticing that in the type signature for lift, t is a type constructor that takes two arguments m and a, therefore it’s kind must be M -> A -> Type, where M is the kind of m and A is the kind of A. Only Type kinds can appear in type signatures.

In the constraint on lift, the type variable m is an argument to Monad, which has kind (Type -> Type) -> Constraint.

Therefore kind M is Type -> Type, and since m a has kind Type, the kind of a is Type.

Therefore the kind of t is (Type -> Type) -> Type -> Type, and the kind of MonadTrans is

(Type -> Type) -> Type -> Type -> Constraint

# 2.2 Data Kinds

-XDataKinds allows lifting of data constructors into type constructors.

Seems like there are some bugs with the UserType example given in the text if naively copied into a source file, but perhaps that wasn’t the author’s intent. Regardless, was a simple fix:

{-# LANGUAGE DataKinds      #-}
{-# LANGUAGE KindSignatures #-}

data UserType = UserK | AdminK

data Proxy (a :: UserType) = Proxy

doSensitiveThings = undefined
Which kind-errors on doSensitveThings (a :: Proxy 'UserK)
For exercise solutions, see 02/TypeLevelFunctions.hs