On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 3:31 AM, Shishir Srivastava < shishir.srivastava@gmail.com> wrote:
I still don't quite understand how 'flg' being a boolean [] is used in the last 'if statement' of implementation because when I try to do the same thing outside in GHCi it fails miserably even though I am casting it to [Int] -
-- return (if [True, False] then "4" else "3")::[Int]
"cast" is a misnomer in Haskell. When you add a type to an expression, you aren't changing the type of the expression like a C-style cast, but picking out a type from the set of possible types for that expression. Ignoring the if part and and focusing on return, which has a type Monad m => a -> m a. [Int] is equivalent to [] Int, so [] would be the Monad, and a is Int. While 3 can be an Int, "3", can't. So you could do return 3 :: [Int] or equivalently return 3 :: [] Int to get [3], you can't do return "3" :: [Int], because "3" can't be an Int. You can do return "3" :: [String], since "3" is a string. Just to show the range of possibilities, you can do return 3 :: IO Float, and get back 3.0 as an IO action. The monad in the type is IO, and 3 can be interpreted as a Float.