Seeing Typeclass definition in ghci for a specific type

Question

Is there a way to see Typeclass definition in ghci for a specific type?

For example, Maybe is defined like this:

instance Functor Maybe          


        

Answer 1

No, it's not possible – not just for instances but for anything. GHC only registers the compiled version of a package, so the source code generally won't be available to ghci.

Probably, most often you'll be using stuff from Hackage; in that case it's very simple to find the source code of such instances by hoogling the module, locating the class or data declaration, and clicking on source.

When you don't have internet access or whatever else reason you can't hoogle online, you first need to find out in what package the module is included. The easiest way to do that:

$ ghc-pkg find-module Data.Maybe
/usr/local/haskell/lib/ghc-7.6.2/package.conf.d
   base-4.6.0.1
   haskell2010-1.1.1.0
~/.ghc/x86_64-linux-7.6.2/package.conf.d

Then, as I said, GHC doesn't know where the source code to these packages is located – in fact it might not even be available on your system! But if you've installed the package (or one that depends on it) with cabal install, it will be there, by default in ~/.cabal/packages/hackage.haskell.org/PᴀᴄᴋᴀɢᴇNᴀᴍᴇ (as a compressed archive, but that's not a big hurdle). Within the package project folder, you can simply locate the module via the directory structure, which represents the module hierarchy.

Other packages, like your example of Data.Maybe (package haskell2010), may have come right with your installation of GHC, e.g. the Haskell platform. In that case, I believe the easiest thing is to search there for the Haddock documentation file. In my case,

$ find /usr/local/haskell -name 'Data-Maybe.html' | head -n1 | xargs firefox

That'll open up the equivalent to what hoogle links you to (but on your local HD), where you can also browse the source code in a user-friendly way.