[Haskell-cafe] Word rigid in "`a' is a rigid type variable..."

[Brandon Allbery]

On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 5:33 AM, Vlatko Basic <vlatko.basic at gmail.com>wrote:

> -- You will need to let go of that "flexible" ...
>
> Yes, sometimes I still have the feeling I'm not thinking fully Haskellish.
> Maybe it's time form me to re-read about the type system.
>

I hinted at it in my follow-up message. Beginners often see that unadorned
"a" and think that that means it can be "anything" and hence "flexible" ---
but in fact it's "caller determined" and that *you can't do anything at all
with it*. It's not flexible, it's a featureless black box you can't see
inside or affect in any way. Your only options are ignore it or hand it off
to something else.

To give an example of why that kind of thing can be useful, consider the
map function:

    map :: (a -> b) -> [a] -> [b]

`map` itself can do nothing with `a` (or `b`). But it has also been given a
function which *can* do something. Moreover, just from the type, you can
work out exactly what that something must be! (Ignoring nontermination,
which basically means that we're ignoring "cheating" by throwing an
exception or etc.)

There is certainly flexibility here --- but that flexibility is not in the
type system. To the type system, `a` and `b` are rigid, featureless boxes.
But this lack of flexibility at the type level gives you flexibility at a
different level, and at the same time gives you a guarantee: the type
system won't let any implementation of `map` go behind your back and make
changes to `a` or `b`, the only thing it's allowed to do it use the
function you passed it. And in fact it only permits one sensible
interpretation, which you can determine just from the type signature.


> Can you recommend any resources that helped you in better understanding?
>

Not really, since I came at it somewhat "sideways". (In particular, I had
already encountered functional programming via Lisp/Scheme and APL/J, and
strong typing from exposure to SML.)

-- 
brandon s allbery kf8nh                               sine nomine associates
allbery.b at gmail.com                                  ballbery at sinenomine.net
unix, openafs, kerberos, infrastructure, xmonad        http://sinenomine.net
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/attachments/20131114/471e297f/attachment.html>