Hi, I am studying the Haskell type class system as part of a language comparison thesis. At this point I am looking at how default function definitions are handled in classes. Functions are usually defined in instances, not classes. I appreciate that the code below may not be an appropriate way to write Haskell programs, but it does help me understand how defaults work. I am not trying to construct a running program. Any feedback on the questions below and defaults work in general would be appreciated. Pat module A where data Person = Person String Integer deriving Show data Employee = Employee String Integer deriving Show class C1 c1 where age :: c1 -> Integer -- add default impl, can this be defined only once at class level? -- Can this function be redefined in a *class* lower down the heirarchy? age(c1) = 1 -- Is it true that instances must exists before we can run function or make subclasses? instance C1 Person where instance C1 Employee where -- Is it true that C2 can inherit age, provided an instance of C1 exists class C1 c2 => C2 c2 where name :: c2 -> String name(c2) = "C2" instance C2 Person where instance C2 Employee where -- Is it true that C3 cannot override C1 or C2 existing defaults? -- Is it true that this must be done at instance level? -- class Cx c3 => C3 c3 where -- age(c3) = 3 -- This message has been scanned for content and viruses by the DIT Information Services E-Mail Scanning Service, and is believed to be clean. http://www.dit.ie