[Haskell-cafe] data vs newtype (was: OOP'er with (hopefully) trivial questions)

[Bayley, Alistair]

> From: haskell-cafe-bounces at haskell.org 
> [mailto:haskell-cafe-bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf Of Nicholls, Mark
> 
> To recap...
> 
> "type" introduces a synonym for another type, no new type is
> created....it's for readabilities sake.
> 
> "Newtype" introduces an isomorphic copy of an existing type...but
> doesn't copy it's type class membership...the types are
> disjoint/distinct but isomorphic (thus only 1 constructor param).
> 
> "data" introduces a new type, and defines a composition of existing
> types to create a new one based on "->" and "(".
> 
> "class" introduces a constraint that any types declaring themselves to
> be a member of this class...that functions must exist to satisfy the
> constraint.


As an aside, I was wondering exactly what the differences are between
newtype and data i.e. between

> newtype A a = A a

and

> data A a = A a

According to:
  http://www.haskell.org/onlinereport/decls.html#sect4.2.3
newtype is, umm, stricter than data i.e. newtype A undefined =
undefined, but data A undefined = A undefined. Other than that, newtype
just seems to be an optimization hint. Is that a more-or-less correct
interpretation?

Alistair
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