PR Stanley wrote:
Hi
(16 :: Float) is a perfectly legitimate statement although I'm
surprised that it's allowed in a type strong language such as Haskell.
It's a bit like casting in good old C. What's going on here?
It's not a type cast, it's a class method:
class Num n where
...
fromInteger :: Integer -> n
...
The literal "16" is interpretted as the function call "fromInteger 16".
If you write a literal, the compiler will usually optimise away the
function call leaving only a literal Float/Double/Int/Word16/whatever.
Notice, however, that you can explicitly call this function yourself at
any time to change the type of something. Note that this is *not* a type
cast. It doesn't just change what type the type checker thinks the data
is; it really does change the actual bit pattern in memory. (E.g.,
turning an Integer into a Word8, possibly causing the value to overflow
and wrap around in the process!)
It's really no more mysterious than the way "show" can transform many
kinds of data into a String, and "read" can transform them back again.
It's not bypassing the type system, it's doing a real type conversion.
I hope that made sense...
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