[Haskell-cafe] No "fields of ... not initialized" warning with RecordWildCards and Void?

[Keith]

Yes, except you have been constructing a Void value in Haskell (it's just always bottom); that's why you got a compiler warning.

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On 1 November 2021 17:31:10 UTC, "Markus Läll" <markus.l2ll at gmail.com> wrote:
>Got it! I think I've found another way to think about this:
>- Void is a type-level empty: you can't even construct it
>- () is a value-level empty: you can construct it but the information
>content of the value is empty
>
>On Mon, Nov 1, 2021 at 7:04 PM Tom Ellis <
>tom-lists-haskell-cafe-2017 at jaguarpaw.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> Ah, I think you really do want () there then, not Void.  Void you
>> *can* use.  In fact you can use it to make anything!
>>
>>     absurd :: Void -> a
>>
>> () you can't really use because you can't use it to make anything that
>> wasn't there in the first place.
>>
>> Tom
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 01, 2021 at 06:58:16PM +0200, Markus Läll wrote:
>> > My use of Void is similar to your example: it's a polymorphic field that
>> I
>> > don't want to be able to use sometimes, and with Void I thought I
>> wouldn't
>> > (at the value level, that is), but as you say I shouldn't be able to
>> > construct it either (which I do want to do). In short, what I wanted to
>> > remind myself was that this field is empty, and it seemed a better
>> > candidate than the unit as the unit I could handle at runtime. But
>> perhaps
>> > the correct solution is to refactor the type into separate data types
>> > instead.
>> >
>> > On Mon, Nov 1, 2021 at 4:23 PM Tom Ellis <
>> > tom-lists-haskell-cafe-2017 at jaguarpaw.co.uk> wrote:
>> >
>> > > On Mon, Nov 01, 2021 at 04:07:02PM +0200, Markus Läll wrote:
>> > > > Would it make sense to suppress the "fields of ... not initialized"
>> when
>> > > > the type of the field is Void, or any other type with no data
>> > > constructors?
>> > > > As the only way to construct void would be `undefined :: Void`, and
>> the
>> > > > field already is undefined.
>> > >
>> > > It makes the opposite of sense to me.  The warning is there to tell
>> > > you when you've failed to initialize a field.  Whether you *can't*
>> > > initialise a field because its type has no values makes no difference.
>> > > You're still not initialising it!
>> > >
>> > > I sometimes use a polymorphic field to indicate whether a constructor
>> > > can be present or not.  For example
>> > >
>> > > data Expr a = Zero | One | Sum Expr Expr | Product a Expr Expr
>> > >
>> > > Now `type ProductExpr = Expr ()` is an `Expr` which might contain
>> > > `Product`s. `type NoProductExpr = Expr Void` is an `Expr` which
>> > > cannot because I "can't" write a `Product` constructor for it (at
>> > > least not without getting a warning).
>> > >
>> > > I'm curious: how come you're in the situation where you need to fill
>> > > in product types with `Void` entries?
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>
>
>
>-- 
>Markus Läll
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