[Haskell-cafe] Type synonyms considered harmful?

[Andreas Abel]

In general, use newtypes instead of type synonyms, and records instead 
of tuples.

Also, ghc has its flaws when dealing with type synonyms, i.e., in error 
messages you find a type synoym needlessly expanded.

Does anyone know a programming language that has type synonyms and 
always uses the type syn. in error messages when the user originally 
wrote it?  I'd be eager to learn.

Cheers,
Andreas

On 19.01.2015 12:15, Evan Laforge wrote:
> I think they have their place.  I use them when it's too much bother
> to unwrap a newtype but still nice to have some documentation,
> especially if it shows up in many places but I only want to document
> in one place.  Or if I think a type error is unlikely, or not a big
> deal, compared to the wrap/unwrap hassle.  For documentation it's also
> nice to have a name to use in haddock.  Also I tend to use them when
> the scope is small.  I agree that if the scope is wide, or if it's a
> library, then they can be not worth it.  E.g. I've decided to not use
> Data.Graph's 'type Forest a = [Tree a]'.
>
> It's a convenience vs. correctness trade-off, and it's useful to have
> something covering the convenience end.  Perhaps you shouldn't put
> them in library APIs though.
>
> On Sun, Jan 18, 2015 at 3:06 AM, Julian Ospald <hasufell at posteo.de> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I've recently had a discussion about type synonyms and when to use them
>> in haskell.
>>
>> On the one hand, they make reading type signatures easier and tell you
>> what is meant, not just what is inside. On the other hand they also sort
>> of hide what is inside, although you will probably need to know exactly
>> that when using them. This might make reading code for new collaborators
>> more difficult if they have to memorize all type synonyms first.
>>
>> So there are basically a few questions:
>> * What do you think is a good policy for when and how to use them? Or
>> would you say just not use them at all and put equivalent information in
>> parameter documentation?
>> * What are the upsides, downsides, pitfalls and also alternatives? (for
>> completeness, also since
>> https://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Type_synonym is a bit sparse)
>> * Can we do something to improve the downsides? Or is there already
>> something? (e.g. editor/IDE that can tell me the underlying type, error
>> messages etc.)
>>
>>
>> --
>> Regards,
>> Julian Ospald
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-- 
Andreas Abel  <><      Du bist der geliebte Mensch.

Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Chalmers and Gothenburg University, Sweden

andreas.abel at gu.se
http://www2.tcs.ifi.lmu.de/~abel/