David Menendez wrote:
On Sun, Oct 25, 2009 at 1:37 PM, Isaac Dupree
<m...@isaac.cedarswampstudios.org> wrote:
David Menendez wrote:
The expected type is what the context wants (it's *ex*ternal). The
inferred type is what the expression itself has (it's *in*ternal).
So inferring the type Maybe () for bar seems wrong.
well, maybe GHC just gets it wrong enough of the time, that I got confused.
Or maybe ... When there are bound variables interacting, on the inside and
outside, it gets confusing.
ghci:
Prelude> \x -> (3+x) + (length x)
<interactive>:1:15:
Couldn't match expected type `[a]' against inferred type `Int'
In the second argument of `(+)', namely `(length x)'
In the expression: (3 + x) + (length x)
In the expression: \ x -> (3 + x) + (length x)
Your explanation of "expected" and "inferred" could make sense to me if the
error message followed the "Couldn't match" line with, instead,
"In the first argument of `length', namely `x'"
because 'length' gives the context of expected list-type, but we've found
out from elsewhere (a vague word) that 'x' needs to have type Int.
This had me confused for a while, but I think I've worked out what's
happening. (+) is polymorphic, ...
Oh darn, it sounds like you're right. And polymorphism is so common. I
just came up with that example randomly as the first nontrivial
type-error-with-a-lambda I could think of...
I wonder if it would help for the message to also output what it thinks
the complete type of the function is (so far).
I wonder if it could look something like this:
Couldn't match expected type `[a]' against inferred type `Int'
In the second argument of `(+) :: [a] -> [a]',
namely `(length x) :: Int'
(always, at the risk/tradeoff of taking up space with lots of useless
information. sadly. hmm.)
Ideally I would like GHC to pick a location for the error that's more
intuitive, but that sounds like an awfully vague desire :-)
-Isaac
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