I'm experimenting with type classes in Haskell and tried to implement a new class based on nullifying values of various types e.g. nullify 6 = 0 nullify 7.6 = 0 nullify [1,2,3] = [] nullify Tree = Empty etc. I set up my class as follows: class Null a where nullify :: a -> a instance Null Int where nullify x = 0 but get the following error when I invoke nullify 6 on the Hugs command line: ERROR - Unresolved overloading *** Type : (Num a, Null a) => a *** Expression : nullify 6 I then tried the following: instance Num a => Null a where nullify x = 0 but got the following error in Hugs ERROR "C:\zero.hs":5 - Syntax error in instance head (constructor expected) Can anybody explain what I'm doing wrong ? Thanks in advance, Tim.