[Haskell-cafe] Throwback of inferred types

[Jonathan Cast]

On 20 Jan 2008, at 1:02 PM, gwern0 at gmail.com wrote:

> On 2008.01.19 19:11:13 +0100, Peter Verswyvelen <bf3 at telenet.be>  
> scribbled 1.4K characters:
>> The problem is that this only works when the complete source file  
>> compiles
>> correctly no?
>
> Yes. As I said, it's a very hackish solution - think of it as proof- 
> of-concept.
>
>> I would find it most useful to get type inference information on  
>> the fly,
>> even when not all of the code compiles correctly yet.
>
> Does that make sense? If the code doesn't compile, then how could  
> any type-inference be trustable? It might be reliable if the error  
> is in definitions which don't get called or otherwise used by the  
> function you are asking after, but there are going to be edge- 
> cases, I should think, where it would bite you.

Even if it's not reliable, the compiler gives its error messages  
based on some form of partial type inference.  It would be quite  
interesting, some times, to see what the compiler thinks the types  
are, when it gives a type error (this bit me recently trying  
polymorphic recursion: I had a long list of polymorphic functions  
defined without type signatures (since the names were clear enough),  
factored out some duplicated code, and wound up with a set of  
mutually recursive functions, one of which was polymorphically  
recursive.  I'll dig the example up if you want (it's kind of  
compilcated).  Knowing that the compiler had various types inferred  
correctly would have helped me zero in on the place I needed a type  
signature (or at least I remember wanting to find such things out at  
the time)).

jcc