[Haskell-cafe] Type question in instance of a class

[Bulat Ziganshin]

Hello Maurí­cio,

Monday, November 17, 2008, 12:32:11 AM, you wrote:

> class MyClass r where function :: r -> s

this tells that f may return value of any type requested at the call
site, i.e. one can write

main = do print (f (Mydata 1) :: String)
          print (f (Mydata 1) :: [Bool])
          print (f (Mydata 1) :: Either Double Float)
          

> instance MyClass (MyData v) where function (MyData a) = a

this definition can return value of only one type, so it can't serve
all the calls i mentioned above

> GHC says that the type of the result of 'function' is both determined by
> the "rigid type" from MyClass and  the "rigid type" from MyData. But why
> can't both be the same?

are you OOPer? :)


ps: GHC error messages should be fired :)

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