1
0
mirror of https://github.com/jbranchaud/til synced 2026-01-03 07:08:01 +00:00

Add Data Structures With Self-Referential Types as a reasonml til

This commit is contained in:
jbranchaud
2018-07-08 15:40:39 -05:00
parent 80ac8d3cea
commit 4f06c32641
2 changed files with 31 additions and 1 deletions

View File

@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
# Data Structures With Self-Referential Types
[ReasonML](https://reasonml.github.io/) has a powerful type system that
allows us to create types that represent all sorts of things. For data
structures like [linked lists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_list),
we need a sort of recursive type, a type that can reference itself -- a
self-referential type.
Reason's type system allows us to define types that reference themselves.
Combine that with type arguments and variants -- we can create a type
definition to represents something like a linked list.
```reason
type linked_list('a) =
| Empty
| Node('a, linked_list('a));
```
A linked list is a chain of nodes. It can be an _empty_ list, hence the
first part of the variant. Otherwise, it is a node that has some data and
then points to another linked list (chain of nodes).
The `'a` part is a type argument. When creating a linked list, we can decide
what type the `'a` will be. Here is an `int`-based linked list:
```reason
let my_list: linked_list(int) = Node(25, Node(27, Empty));
/* my_list = [25] => [27] => [] */
```