Am Dienstag, 11. Januar 2005 18:45 schrieben Sie:
On 11 Jan 2005, at 16:47, Daniel Fischer wrote:
Am Dienstag, 11. Januar 2005 16:45 schrieb Henning Thielemann:
On Tue, 11 Jan 2005, Jules Bean wrote:
Hint: Don't put signatures on functions, then. Instead, let the compiler infer the type for you! If you want to know what the type is, ask GHCi with :info. And if you think it is helpful documentation, you can copy-paste the correct signature from ghci into your source code!
There should always be signatures.
I do almost unrestrictedly agree!
Deciphering code without type signatures is -- except in fairly trivial cases -- always a nuisance, and if the author chose short names instead of telling ones, it is positively disgusting!
That's not really what I meant.
I meant that, especially when you are figuring out a new language, getting the types inferred for you is helpful and also instructive... I wasn't suggesting that they be left out permanently.
Jules
Sorry about the misunderstanding. Yes, getting the types inferred for you is helpful and instructive, however, as Stefan Holdermans wrote, giving a signature upfront has definite merits, so probably the thing to do is - write a signature first - then comment it out and see what the System infers (and of course try to understand that). Concerning Keith Wansbrough and David Roundy's remarks about wrong comments, I am miserably aware of their correctness, but I still retain the hope that what a comment says about the overall intention of a function is more often helpful than misleading (am I naive?) even if the details lag behind by several updates. Best wishes, Daniel