[Haskell-cafe] Typeclasses vs simple functions?

[Olex P]

Hey guys,

It's a dumb question but I'd like to know a right answer...
Let's say we have some geometry data that can be Sphere, Cylinder, Circle
and so on. We can implement it as new data type plus a bunch of functions
that work on this data:

data Geometry = Sphere Position Radius
                        | Cylinder Position Radius Height
                        | Circle Position Radius
                        deriving (Show)

perimeter (Sphere _ r) = 0.0
perimeter (Cylinder _ r h) = 0.0
perimeter (Circle _ r) = 2.0 * pi * r

Perimeter doesn't make sense for Sphere or Cylinder. So we could define a
type class for objects that have perimeter and make an instance of it only
for Circle (data Circle = Circle Position Radius). Make sense. But these
three functions above have desired behaviour. If user has a list of objects
like [Sphere, Circle, Circle, Cylinder] he would like to calculate
perimeters of each object using map perimerer list (in this case we also
have to modify Geometry data type).
So we could make instances of "perimeter" type class for all objects and
return zero in case if perimeter doesn't make sense.
Same as previous version but with typeclasses and with additional
constructors (constructors for each type of object + constructors in
Geometry data). Looks a bit overcomplicated.
Any reasons to use type classes in this case? Maybe there is something I'm
missing?

Cheers,
-O
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