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You're reading from  Soar with Haskell

Product typeBook
Published inDec 2023
Reading LevelBeginner
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781805128458
Edition1st Edition
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Author (1)
Tom Schrijvers
Tom Schrijvers
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Tom Schrijvers

Tom Schrijvers is a professor of computer science at KU Leuven in Belgium since 2014, and previously from 2011 until 2014 at Ghent University in Belgium. He has over 20 years of research experience in programming languages and has co-authored more than 100 scientific papers. Much of his research focuses on functional programming and on the Haskell programming language in particular: he has made many contributions to the language, its ecosystem and applications, and chaired academic events like the Haskell Symposium. At the same time, he has more than a decade of teaching experience (including functional programming with Haskell) and received several teaching awards.
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Enumerations

We start with one of the simplest use cases of ADTs, which are often called enumerations, or enums for short. An enumeration type is a type with a finite number of distinct values. Many programming languages provide specific support for enums, but in Haskell, they are just a special case of ADTs and not especially distinguished from other ADTs.

A game of rock-paper-scissors

We illustrate the use of enumeration types with the well-known game of rock-paper-scissors.

Rock-paper-scissors is a two-player game. There are three possible outcomes for the first player (and likewise for the second player) – lose, draw, or win:

data Outcome = Lose | Draw | Win

The data keyword signals that this is the definition of a new datatype. Next comes the name of the new datatype, Outcome. Finally, the possible values are enumerated: Lose, Draw, and Win. These values are called data constructors, value constructors, or constructors for short. Observe that both the names...

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Soar with Haskell
Published in: Dec 2023Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781805128458

Author (1)

author image
Tom Schrijvers

Tom Schrijvers is a professor of computer science at KU Leuven in Belgium since 2014, and previously from 2011 until 2014 at Ghent University in Belgium. He has over 20 years of research experience in programming languages and has co-authored more than 100 scientific papers. Much of his research focuses on functional programming and on the Haskell programming language in particular: he has made many contributions to the language, its ecosystem and applications, and chaired academic events like the Haskell Symposium. At the same time, he has more than a decade of teaching experience (including functional programming with Haskell) and received several teaching awards.
Read more about Tom Schrijvers