A Gentle Introduction to Haskell, Version 98
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10  Numbers

Haskell provides a rich collection of numeric types, based on those of Scheme [7], which in turn are based on Common Lisp [8]. (Those languages, however, are dynamically typed.) The standard types include fixed- and arbitrary-precision integers, ratios (rational numbers) formed from each integer type, and single- and double-precision real and complex floating-point. We outline here the basic characteristics of the numeric type class structure and refer the reader to §6.4 for details.

10.1  Numeric Class Structure

The numeric type classes (class Num and those that lie below it) account for many of the standard Haskell classes. We also note that Num is a subclass of Eq, but not of Ord; this is because the order predicates do not apply to complex numbers. The subclass Real of Num, however, is a subclass of Ord as well.

The Num class provides several basic operations common to all numeric types; these include, among others, addition, subtraction, negation, multiplication, and absolute value:


[negate is the function applied by Haskell's only prefix operator, minus; we can't call it (-), because that is the subtraction function, so this name is provided instead. For example, -x*y is equivalent to negate (x*y). (Prefix minus has the same syntactic precedence as infix minus, which, of course, is lower than that of multiplication.)]

Note that Num does not provide a division operator; two different kinds of division operators are provided in two non-overlapping subclasses of Num:

The class Integral provides whole-number division and remainder operations. The standard instances of Integral are Integer (unbounded or mathematical integers, also known as "bignums") and Int (bounded, machine integers, with a range equivalent to at least 29-bit signed binary). A particular Haskell implementation might provide other integral types in addition to these. Note that Integral is a subclass of Real, rather than of Num directly; this means that there is no attempt to provide Gaussian integers.

All other numeric types fall in the class Fractional, which provides the ordinary division operator (/). The further subclass Floating contains trigonometric, logarithmic, and exponential functions.


truncate, round,
floor, ceiling:         :: (Fractional a, Integral b) => a -> b

The RealFloat subclass of Floating and RealFrac provides some specialized functions for efficient access to the components of a floating-point number, the exponent and significand. The standard types Float and Double fall in class RealFloat.

10.2  Constructed Numbers

Of the standard numeric types, Int, Integer, Float, and Double are primitive. The others are made from these by type constructors.

Complex (found in the library Complex) is a type constructor that makes a complex type in class Floating from a RealFloat type:

data (RealFloat a) => Complex a = !a :+ !a  deriving (Eq, Text)

The ! symbols are strictness flags; these were discussed in Section 6.3. Notice the context RealFloat a, which restricts the argument type; thus, the standard complex types are Complex Float and Complex Double. We can also see from the data declaration that a complex number is written x :+ y; the arguments are the cartesian real and imaginary parts, respectively. Since :+ is a data constructor, we can use it in pattern matching:


Similarly, the type constructor Ratio (found in the Rational library) makes a rational type in class RealFrac from an instance of Integral. (Rational is a type synonym for Ratio Integer.) Ratio, however, is an abstract type constructor. Instead of a data constructor like :+, rationals use the `%' function to form a ratio from two integers. Instead of pattern matching, component extraction functions are provided:

numerator, denominator  :: (Integral a) => Ratio a -> a

Why the difference? Complex numbers in cartesian form are unique---there are no nontrivial identities involving :+. On the other hand, ratios are not unique, but have a canonical (reduced) form that the implementation of the abstract data type must maintain; it is not necessarily the case, for instance, that numerator (x%y) is equal to x, although the real part of x:+y is always x.

10.3  Numeric Coercions and Overloaded Literals

The Standard Prelude and libraries provide several overloaded functions that serve as explicit coercions:


fromIntegral            =  fromInteger . toInteger
fromRealFrac            =  fromRational . toRational

Two of these are implicitly used to provide overloaded numeric literals: An integer numeral (without a decimal point) is actually equivalent to an application of fromInteger to the value of the numeral as an Integer. Similarly, a floating numeral (with a decimal point) is regarded as an application of fromRational to the value of the numeral as a Rational. Thus, 7 has the type (Num a) => a, and 7.3 has the type (Fractional a) => a. This means that we can use numeric literals in generic numeric functions, for example:

halve x                 =  x * 0.5

This rather indirect way of overloading numerals has the additional advantage that the method of interpreting a numeral as a number of a given type can be specified in an Integral or Fractional instance declaration (since fromInteger and fromRational are operators of those classes, respectively). For example, the Num instance of (RealFloat a) => Complex a contains this method:

fromInteger x           =  fromInteger x :+ 0

This says that a Complex instance of fromInteger is defined to produce a complex number whose real part is supplied by an appropriate RealFloat instance of fromInteger. In this manner, even user-defined numeric types (say, quaternions) can make use of overloaded numerals.

As another example, recall our first definition of inc from Section 2:

inc                     :: Integer -> Integer
inc n                   =  n+1

Ignoring the type signature, the most general type of inc is (Num a) => a->a. The explicit type signature is legal, however, since it is more specific than the principal type (a more general type signature would cause a static error). The type signature has the effect of restricting inc's type, and in this case would cause something like inc (1::Float) to be ill-typed.

10.4  Default Numeric Types

Consider the following function definition:


The exponentiation function (^) (one of three different standard exponentiation operators with different typings, see report section 6.8.5) has the type (Num a, Integral b) => a -> b -> a, and since 2 has the type (Num a) => a, the type of x^2 is (Num a, Integral b) => a. This is a problem; there is no way to resolve the overloading associated with the type variable b, since it is in the context, but has otherwise vanished from the type expression. Essentially, the programmer has specified that x should be squared, but has not specified whether it should be squared with an Int or an Integer value of two. Of course, we can fix this:


It's obvious that this sort of thing will soon grow tiresome, however.

In fact, this kind of overloading ambiguity is not restricted to numbers:

show (read "xyz")

As what type is the string supposed to be read? This is more serious than the exponentiation ambiguity, because there, any Integral instance will do, whereas here, very different behavior can be expected depending on what instance of Text is used to resolve the ambiguity.

Because of the difference between the numeric and general cases of the overloading ambiguity problem, Haskell provides a solution that is restricted to numbers: Each module may contain a default declaration, consisting of the keyword default followed by a parenthesized, comma-separated list of numeric monotypes (types with no variables). When an ambiguous type variable is discovered (such as b, above), if at least one of its classes is numeric and all of its classes are standard, the default list is consulted, and the first type from the list that will satisfy the context of the type variable is used. For example, if the default declaration default (Int, Float) is in effect, the ambiguous exponent above will be resolved as type Int. (See §4.3.4 for more details.)

The "default default" is (Integer, Double), but (Integer, Rational, Double) may also be appropriate. Very cautious programmers may prefer default (), which provides no defaults.

A Gentle Introduction to Haskell, Version 98
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