[Haskell-cafe] Are records type safe?

[Bulat Ziganshin]

Hello Tom,

Thursday, May 4, 2006, 5:20:54 PM, you wrote:

> I was experimenting with records this morning and discovered a slight oddity...

> data Rec = RecA { a :: Int } | RecB { a :: Int, b :: Bool } deriving Show

> main :: IO ()
> main = do
>   print (b (RecB { a = 1, b = True }))  -- Works
>   print (b (RecA { a = 1 }))            -- Doesn't

> Of course extracting "b" from a record constructed with "RecA" is
> illegal, but the compiler did not warn against it (ghc -W).  I was
> expecting a warning similar to non-exhaustive pattern matching.

> Are records with optional fields really type safe?

it shpuld be a runtime check. seems that Haskell is so changed your
mind that you expect that compiler should check anything at compile time
:)

-- 
Best regards,
 Bulat                            mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin at gmail.com