problems figuring out what the type system is telling me

[Alastair Reid]

John Hughes writes:
> One way to approach it is to write type signatures, but when a
> definition doesn't type check, remove the signature on that one and
> see whether it then typechecks. If so, the definition is right, but
> your type signature is wrong. Use ghci to find out the correct type
> signature, and insert it.

Another useful trick when chasing type errors is to stub out a few
functions or cases of functions with 'undefined'.  At first sight,
'undefined' is a fairly useless function since it always fails.  But
undefined has one great property: it's type is 'forall a. a' which
means you can use it absolutely anywhere.

Suppose I have 10 mutually recursive functions (e.g., an interpreter
for a language) and I'm chasing a type error.  I might comment out
the real definition of some of the functions and replace them with
definitions like:

  evalExpression :: <whatever type it should have>
  evalExpression = undefined
  {-
  real but possibly buggy definition goes here
  -}

or I might comment out just some cases of a function while I figure
out which branch is really causing the problem:

  evalExpression :: Env -> Expr -> Value
  evalExpression env (Int i) = IntValue i
  evalExpression env (Str s) = StringValue i
  evalExpression env (Apply f e) = undefined -- app (evalFunction env f) (evalExpression env e)
  evalExpression env (Var v) = undefined  -- fromJust (lookup env v)


-- 
Alastair Reid        reid@cs.utah.edu        http://www.cs.utah.edu/~reid/