[Haskell-cafe] Principal type in Haskell

[Gerrit van den Geest]

According to Haskell 98 the principal type of f should be:

f :: (Eq a) => a -> a -> Bool.

GHC does only perform context-reduction using instance-declarations if 
there are no type-variables in the type. Because the type in this 
function is [a], ghc doesn't perform context-reduction. Ghc chooses this 
strategy because of extensions like overlapping instances, there remains 
more information in the type of a function to select an instance.

For some reason GHC also applies this strategy if one turns of the 
extensions.



Grt




william kim wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I am confused by the notion of principal type in Haskell with type 
> classes. Consider a simple example:
>
> f x y = [x] == [y]
>
> GHCi yields type f :: (Eq [a]) => a -> a -> Bool.
>
> But according to the paper "Type classes: an exploration of the design 
> space", predicate Eq [a] should be reduced to Eq a. Is this reduction 
> performed here? What should be the principal type of f?
>
> Thanks.
>
> william
>
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