[Haskell] Re: Implicit type of numeric constants

[Christian Sievers]

Robert Stroud wrote:

> However, I still think there's a bit of an inconsistency here. I  
> understand that if k had the type "Num a => a", then the expression  
> "show k" would be ambiguous, but unless I write that expression,  
> there's no ambiguity...

Actually, you can give k that type, and thanks to defaulting you
can then still use  show k.

> So it seems to me that the type checker is being a bit too eager to  
> prevent something that hasn't happened yet.

Here it is the monomorphism restriction (Haskell report section 4.5.5)
that enforces defaulting.

> In contrast, in the case where I write "let k = 2 ...", the type  
> checker seems happy to resolve the polymorphic type within the  
> context of the let expression, and does what I expect.

I hope my last mail explained this: defaulting for monomorphic types
happens quite late.

> So is the problem that the context is effectively unbounded when I  
> load the definition from a file, and hence the type checker has to be  
> very conservative about preventing the ambiguity?

A file is (essentially) a module.  This defaulting happens
"when type inference for an entire module is complete"
(rule 2 of the above mentioned section), because we don't
want types to depend on arbitrary other modules - think of
seperate compilation.

> I'm afraid I'm also still not clear about why 2 doesn't default to  
> 2::Integer in the same way that k defaults to k::Integer,

It does, that's why   show 2   works.


Hope that helps
Christian Sievers