Bikeshedding request for GHCi's :type

[Iavor Diatchki]

Currently GHCi shows the "real" type of an expression (i.e., the inferred
generalized type), when you ask it:

Prelude> :t 1
1 :: Num a => a

Note that there is no defaulting happening, at least at the top level---of
course if there were local things that needed to be defaulted while the
expression was being type-checked then those would be defaulted.

If you ask GHCi to *evaluate* a polymorphic expression, then it will try to
default the type when it is figuring out how to show the result.  The
alternative would be to say "sorry, I can't evaluate this, because it is
polymorphic, so please tell me what type do you mean".  This is probably a
bit too inconvenient for practical use.

-Iavor




On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 5:24 AM, Johannes Waldmann <
johannes.waldmann at htwk-leipzig.de> wrote:

> > .. :type should report the real type
>
> What about defaulting? Is it real?
> https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/11994
>
> - J.W.
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