On 17 Dec 2007, at 10:46, Nicholls, Mark wrote:
I can obviously at a later date add a new class Triangle, and not
have to touch any of the above code….
Yes, and you can indeed do a similar thing in Haskell. The natural
thing to do here would be to define a type Shape...
data Shape = Circle Int
| Rectangle Int Int
| Square Int
area :: Shape -> Int -- Note, this is an interesting type if you want
the area of circles
area (Circle r) = pi * r^2
area (Rectangle h w) = h * w
area (Square l) = area (Rectangle l l)
If however, you *really* want to keep your shapes as being seperate
types, then you'll want to invoke the class system (note, not the same
as OO classes).
class Shape a where
area :: a -> Int
newtype Circle = C Int
instance Shape Circle where
area (C r) = pi * r^2
newtype Rectangle = R Int Int
instance Shape Rectangle where
area (R h w) = h * w
newtype Square = Sq Int
instance Shape Square where
area (Sq l) = l * l
-- Now we can do something with our shapes
doubleArea :: Shape a => a -> Int
doubleArea s = (area s) * 2
Hope that helps
Bob_______________________________________________
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