[Haskell-cafe] newtype is superfluous

[Simon Marlow]

On 15 October 2005 19:08, Bulat Ziganshin wrote:

> Hello Lennart,
> 
> Saturday, October 15, 2005, 5:03:50 PM, you wrote:
> 
>> Alas, Haskell is more subtle than that.  Which is why newtype exists.
> 
>> Try
>>         case A _|_ of A _ -> 1
>> with the two versions of A to see the difference.
> 
> this have practical usage?? may be for such very special things
> strictness annotation will be enough??

The semantics of newtype are really decided by its implementation.  The
basic idea is that a newtype of T can be represented in the same way as
T.  Once you know this, it pretty much fixes what semantics you can
expect - the semantics of a newtype of T must be the same as T, because
the runtime cannot distinguish the two.

Cheers,
	Simon