Soar with Haskell

6

Type Classes

Like most other programming languages, Haskell features a number of overloaded operators and functions, such as (+), that work at different types. For instance, (+) has the following four types:

(+) :: Int -> Int -> Int
(+) :: Integer -> Integer -> Integer
(+) :: Float -> Float -> Float
(+) :: Double -> Double -> Double

Overloading is not the same as (parametric) polymorphism: (+) does not have the type a -> a -> a and does not work on all possible types. Overloading means that the operator only works for a specific set of types and that the operator’s behavior is different for each type.

In many languages, overloading is ad hoc: it exists for a fixed number of operators and functions and a fixed set of types. Moreover, a function ...