Exploring Haskell's type system - A Roman number type

Jul 26 2013

Once in a while I need a break from my day-to-day job in C# land. Don’t get me wrong, I like the language, but it doesn’t cover all of my intellectual needs. More specifically, if I

Need some functional, imperfect chaos, which gets much done nonetheless, or in Scott Hanselman’s words, if I want to do some assembly language, I go and visit JavaScript
Need purity, the most amazing compiler that ruthlessly cracks down on any typing (in the computing sense) error you do, the serenity of a perfect universe that simulates dirt only if it has to, then I visit Haskell.

This time it was Haskell’s turn - the last time I delved into Haskell, I hadn’t really touched its type system, only used those already in place. This time I wanted to rectify that.

Behold - the Roman number

Disclaimer: I may have only implemented a subset of the proper rules of how to write Roman numbers. If you use this type to calculate the altitude of your plane, and it doesn’t work, don’t sue me, because I give no guarantees as to the 100% correctness of the code

The Roman number cough system cough had no extraordinary mathematical capabilities - I am not aware of any systematic approach that would let you add two Roman numbers. Their only purpose must have been to attach a word to a number.

The interesting parts with regard to the type system are lines 8-22. What is defined here is

What a Roman is : It has two constructors that take a String or an Int
That a Roman can be shown, which makes it interesting e.g. in the interactive mode of Haskell
That two Romans can be compared
That a Roman behaves like a Num type

The rest is really just a fair enough implementation of how to get from something like MCMLXXXIV to 1984.

The (probably quite inaccurate) conclusions I take away from this quick splash into Haskell-land

Haskell classes can be compared somewhat to interfaces, but they can carry default implementations
Haskell data can have what could be compared to multiple constructors, but later on we can actually match on how data was constructed
Not used here, but Haskell has a decent record syntax (yes, I am pointing at you, Erlang)
The capabilities, or traits, or contracts or whatever you like to call them are much cleaner defined. Not every thing is by default equatable. Not every thing is by default displayable.

All in all, once again, refreshing, and purifying ;)