Thanks. Yes I read this is syntactic sugar, and I actually like that
approach; it automatically "encapsulates" the data fileds by functions,
which from an OO programmers point of view, is a good thing. I'm doing my
best to get rid of that OO view though, which is not easy after 15 years of
OO and 10 years of imperative programming ;-)
However, I never understood why Haskell doesn't permit the same name for a
function acting on different types, even without using type classes. Must be
some deeper reason for it (currying?)
Now the type class approach is interesting; it's like saying "any type that
has an XXX field"...
Lot's of typing, but IMHO it's worth it because it abstracts the concept of
a field. I read some papers that some extensions got proposed to treat
"fields" as first class values, so one could just do "get X (Vector2 1 2)".
Did something like that make it into GHC?
So the example becomes:
module Main where
-- "Vector" is a rather stupid example, because Haskell has tuples
data Vector2 = Vector2 Float Float
data Vector3 = Vector3 Float Float Float
class HasX v where
getX :: v -> Float
setX :: v -> Float -> v
class HasY v where
getY :: v -> Float
setY :: v -> Float -> v
class HasZ v where
getZ :: v -> Float
setZ :: v -> Float -> v
instance HasX Vector2 where
getX (Vector2 x y) = x
setX (Vector2 x y) value = Vector2 value y
instance HasY Vector2 where
getY (Vector2 x y) = y
setY (Vector2 x y) value = Vector2 x value
instance HasX Vector3 where
getX (Vector3 x y z) = x
setX (Vector3 x y z) value = Vector3 value y z
instance HasY Vector3 where
getY (Vector3 x y z) = y
setY (Vector3 x y z) value = Vector3 x value z
instance HasZ Vector3 where
getZ (Vector3 x y z) = z
setZ (Vector3 x y z) value = Vector3 x y value
test v x = getY (setX v x)
main = print $ test (Vector2 1 2) 3
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Paul Johnson
Sent: Saturday, June 16, 2007 12:51 AM
To: Andrew Coppin
Cc: haskell-cafe@haskell.org
Subject: Re: [Haskell-cafe] Haskell record extension?
Andrew Coppin wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>> I'm learning Haskell.
>> I was surprised that the following example did not compile:
>>
>> data Vector2 = Vector2 { x :: Float, y :: Float }
>> data Vector3 = Vector3 { x :: Float, y :: Float, z :: Float }
>>
>> error: "Multiple declarations of `Main.x'"
>>
>
> AFAIK, GHC doesn't implement any fix for this. (I've been wrong before
> tho...)
This is a feature, not a bug. Haskell in general does not let you give
two functions the same name (which is what you want to do). This is
true of all functions, not just the ones implicitly defined here. Your
"Vector2" type is pure syntactic sugar for:
data Vector2 = Vector2 Float Float
x, y :: Vector2 -> Float
x (Vector2 v _) = v
y (Vector2 _ v) = v
So now you also want
x (Vector3 v _ _) = v
etc etc.
And no, you can't do that because "x" on its own might refer to either
version, and its not clear which one you want.
Paul.
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