LHS qualifier of const ignored by dispatch

General Usage
1

I have the following:

  const ScalarVariateVal = Real
  const ArrayVariateVal{N,VT<: ScalarVariateVal} = DenseArray{VT, N}
  const DictVariateVal{K,VT<: ScalarVariateVal} = Associative{K, VT} 
  const AbstractVariateVal{V<:ScalarVariateVal} = Union{V, (ArrayVariateVal{XX,V} where XX), (DictVariateVal{XX,V} where XX)}

And then, in another file:

valtype{VT}(x::AbstractVariateVal{VT}) = VT

The problem is that the V<:ScalarVariateVal in the definition of AbstractVariateVal seems to be getting lost somehow. That is, the above method for valtype is getting called with VT==DataType… but then, since DataType is its own type, that leads to infinite recursion.

I tried to add “where V<:ScalarVariateVal” to each instance of V in the RHS definition of AbstractVariateVal, but that gives another error I don’t understand: “expected UnionAll, got Type{Union{Associative{XX,V} where XX where V<:Real, DenseArray{V,XX} where XX where V<:Real, Real}}”. Isn’t UnionAll the type for anything that starts “Type{Union{…”?

I can certainly find workarounds for these issues, but should I report them? Are they bugs in Julia, or just failures of my own understanding?

2

Best to post a fully reproducible example that somebody can paste into the REPL. It’s somewhat hard to say anything in the abstract.

3

My guess is that the V in the Union is matching the “wrong” thing (wrong being not the thing you expect). Unions in parameterized functions are kinda tricky.

4

Also just from the title, const does not affect any runtime behavior with a few exception of ccall, cglobal, llvmcall etc. It certainly must not affect dispatch.