On 2004 July 26 Monday 13:46, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
According to Enderton, one of the ways to define an ordered pair (a,b)
is {{a},{a,b}}. A relation is defined as a set of ordered-pairs. A
map, of course, is a single-valued relation.
The motivation for defining ordered pairs that way is more mathematical than
type-theoretic. It arises from having sets as a starting point, and needing
to define ordered pairs, relations, and functions.
Given all that, suppose I have a FiniteMap Int String in Haskell.
This is, according to the definitions above, a Set (Int,String).
You have run into a problem expressing your meaning, because (Int, String)
indicates a specific type in Haskell which is _not_ a Set.
An
element of that has type (Int,String), which contains {Int,String}. But
that can't exist because a Set contains only elements of one type.
The ordered pair 1,one would be represented as {{1},{1,one}}. Now,
{1,one} can't exist in Haskell as you say, but it can be represented using
the Either type constructor.
Either enables a value to be chosen from two otherwise incompatible types.
Either Int String is a type which can have values that are Ints or Strings,
but the value must specify which using the Left or Right constructor.
Left 5 and Right five
are both values of the type Either Int String.
Left five
would be invalid.
Instead of {1,one), in Haskell you would have {Left 1, Right one}
of type Set (Either Int String). The ordered pair would be
{Left {1}, Right {Left 1, Right one}}
of type
Set (Either Int (Either Int String))
and the finite map would be
Set (Set (Either Int (Either Int String)))
Few people would be able to tolerate writing a program using this type. :-)
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