[Haskell-cafe] a bunch of newbie questions

[Brian Hulley]

Martin Percossi wrote:
> Bulat Ziganshin wrote:
>> this is called ad-hoc polymorphism which is not supported by Haskell.
>> instead Haskell supports parametric polymorphism via type classes.
>
> I think you are wrong here Bulat. In fact, I think
> a) Haskell supports parametric polymorphism, e.g.
> id  :: t -> t
> id x = x
> b) Haskell supports ad-hoc polymorphism via type classes

Sometimes a distinction is made between ad-hoc polymorphism of the kind 
you'd get in C++ with method overloading, and "restricted parametric 
polymorphism" as in "Monad m =>" ie:

1) id :: t -> t -- Unrestricted parametric polymorphism

2) foo :: Monad m => m a -- Restricted parametric polymorphism for (m) and 
unrestricted for (a)

3) bar :: Int -> Int -> String
    bar :: Char -> Bool

    The only way to describe this is ad-hoc polymorphism, and the fact that 
any function is of the form A -> B means regardless of the arity of the 
overloaded functions it can also be supported by typeclasses (*) eg:

        class Bar a b where
            bar :: a -> b

        instance Bar Int (Int -> String) where ...
        instance Bar Char Bool where ...

And a function or value in scope can be making use of unrestricted, 
restricted, and ad-hoc polymorphism at the same time eg:

        zap :: Monad m => Char -> m a
        zap :: Int -> String -> a String

        class Zap a b where
             zap :: a -> b

        instance Monad m => Zap Char (m a) where ...
        instance Zap Int (String -> a String) where ...

(*) But there's one exception: you can't use typeclasses to resolve 
overloadings between values and functions because non-function values don't 
have a type of the form A -> B:

        cool :: Int
        cool :: Char -> String

        class Cool -- Ooops! fundamental problem encountered ;-)

Regards, Brian.

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