[Haskell-beginners] Type question

[Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH]

On 2009 Jan 5, at 15:40, Paul Johnston wrote:
> Hi, I was playing around after getting the new O'Reilly book with  
> lists and their operators!
> Not sure what the below actually means?
>
> Prelude> [] : []
> [[]]
> it :: [[a]]
>
> (Got :set +t on )
>
> I thought the first argument of ':' must be an element, so is the  
> empty list an element of the same type of the contents of the empty  
> list?


(:) :: a -> [a] -> [a]

In this case the first argument is an empty list (type forall a. [a])  
and the second must therefore be an empty list of lists (type forall  
a. [[a]]).  Hence the result is also of type forall a. [[a]] (with all  
the `a's unified).

-- 
brandon s. allbery [solaris,freebsd,perl,pugs,haskell] allbery at kf8nh.com
system administrator [openafs,heimdal,too many hats] allbery at ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon university    KF8NH