[Haskell-beginners] Explicit specification of function types

[Felipe Lessa]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 09:02:56PM -0500, Zachary Turner wrote:
> Everything I've read has said that it's generally considered good practice
> to specify the full type of a function before the definition.  Why is this?

I've written some reasons not too long ago:

http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/beginners/2009-February/001045.html

Note that catching errors is probably the most useful benefit of
writing type signatures. For a simple example, see

> -- f :: Int -> Int
> f n = (n * 45 + 10) / 3

Do you see the problem? I've used (/) while I meant `div`. But,
suppose you didn't write any type signature at all, the code would
compile just fine with type 'f :: Floating a => a -> a'.

Now, in another module you say

> -- Type signature needed here to select what Read instance you want
> getNum :: IO Int
> getNum = read `fmap` getLine

> -- doF :: IO ()
> doF = getNum >>= print . f

Try it for yourself, what error message you get? The usual cryptic one
about "Fractional Int" but *in the definition 'doF'*. Your *programmer
mistake* propagated to another *module*. That is a bad, bad
thing. Whenever you write type signatures, all these kinds of errors
get contained inside the function they were written, saving you a lot
of time.



The second most important benefit probably would be to help you write
the function itself. If you can't write the signature of your
function, then you can't write your function at all. And it is not
uncommon, even among experienced Haskellers, to write a type signature
and then realise they were trying to do something completely wrong!
Unfortunately I can't give you any example right now, but believe me.

--
Felipe.