[Haskell-cafe] What is a number. (Was: Num instances for 2-dimensional types)

[Iavor Diatchki]

Hi,

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 2:37 AM, Henning Thielemann
<lemming at henning-thielemann.de> wrote:
> Numeric literals are treated as Integer or Rational, and are then converted
> with the function fromInteger or fromRational, respectively, to the required
> type. Whatever fromInteger function is in scope, will be used. If
> fromInteger is in a class other than Num (in NumericPrelude it is Ring, but
> it can be also a function that is not a class method), then number literals
> have a type like:
>  2 :: MyNumClass a => a

This is only the case if you use GHC's NoImplicitPrelude extension,
otherwise the "fromInteger" of the Prelude is used, even if it is not
in scope.  Here is an example:

module A where

  boolLit :: Integer -> Bool
  boolLit 0 = False
  boolLit _ = True


{-# LANGUAGE NoImplicitPrelude #-}
module Main where

  import A(boolLit)
  import Prelude(Integer,Bool,print)

  fromInteger :: Integer -> Bool
  fromInteger = boolLit

  main = print 0


Note that 0 means different things in the different modules!

-Iavor