TypeTag equality and application to KMap

[Tomas Mikula]

Hi,

my first question is, is it well defined to compare TypeTags for equality?

Is it correct to assume that

    (ta: TypeTag[A]) == (tb: TypeTag[B])

if and only if

    A =:= B

?

Scaladoc for TypeTags doesn't say anything about testing TypeTags for equality.

If the above assumption is correct, it would be useful to have the following `equalTypes` method on TypeTag:

    trait TypeTag[A] {

        def equalTypes[B](that: TypeTag[B]): Option[A =:= B]

    }

so that we could go from TypeTag equality to type equality, effectively giving us runtime type equality.

One application of TypeTag equality would be a type-safe KMap implementation:

    trait KMap[K[_], V[_]] {

      def put[A](k: K[A], v: V[A]): KMap[K, V]

      def get[A](k: K[A]): Option[V[A]]

      def remove[A](k: K[A]): KMap[K, V]

    }

In general, the `get` method above is not type-safe if there is a possibility of

    (k1: K[A]) == (k2: K[B])

while A and B are different types. This would be the case for, say

    case class Key[A](value: Long)

because we have

    Key[Boolean](42) == Key[String](42)

even though Boolean =/= String.

We could make the KMap type-safe by storing a TypeTag alongside the key, and changing the API to

    trait KMap[K[_], V[_]] {

      def put[A: TypeTag](k: K[A], v: V[A]): KMap[K, V]

      def get[A: TypeTag](k: K[A]): Option[V[A]]

      def remove[A: TypeTag](k: K[A]): KMap[K, V]

    }

i.e. adding the TypeTag context bound to all methods.

Is this a reasonable thing to do?

Best,

Tomas