constants and functions without arguments

Andreas Leitner writes: : | Given a lazy pure functional language do we need to differntiate | (in syntax) between constants and functions without agruments? And | if we don't need to, does Haskell make a difference? Haskell always treats a declaration of the form foo = ... as a pattern binding, not as a function binding. Sections 4.4.3 and 4.5 of the Haskell 98 report give more details. So, in that sense, every function in Haskell takes an argument. There's nothing to prevent you from adding a dummy parameter to turn a constant (i.e. a simple pattern binding) into a function. The only reason I've heard for doing so, is to work around the monomorphism restriction. HTH. Tom