Prim

data Function :: Type -> Type -> Type

A function, which takes values of the type specified by the first type parameter, and returns values of the type specified by the second. In the JavaScript backend, this is a standard JavaScript Function.

The type constructor (->) is syntactic sugar for this type constructor. It is recommended to use (->) rather than Function, where possible.

That is, prefer this:

f :: Number -> Number

to either of these:

f :: Function Number Number
f :: (->) Number Number

data Array :: Type -> Type

An Array: a data structure supporting efficient random access. In the JavaScript backend, values of this type are represented as JavaScript Arrays at runtime.

Construct values using literals:

x = [1,2,3,4,5] :: Array Int

data Record :: Row Type -> Type

The type of records whose fields are known at compile time. In the JavaScript backend, values of this type are represented as JavaScript Objects at runtime.

The type signature here means that the Record type constructor takes a row of concrete types. For example:

type Person = Record (name :: String, age :: Number)

The syntactic sugar with curly braces { } is generally preferred, though:

type Person = { name :: String, age :: Number }

The row associates a type to each label which appears in the record.

Technical note: PureScript allows duplicate labels in rows, and the meaning of Record r is based on the first occurrence of each label in the row r.

data Number :: Type

A double precision floating point number (IEEE 754).

Construct values of this type with literals. Negative literals must be wrapped in parentheses if the negation sign could be mistaken for an infix operator:

x = 35.23 :: Number
y = -1.224e6 :: Number
z = exp (-1.0) :: Number

data Int :: Type

A 32-bit signed integer. See the purescript-integers package for details of how this is accomplished when compiling to JavaScript.

Construct values of this type with literals. Hexadecimal syntax is supported. Negative literals must be wrapped in parentheses if the negation sign could be mistaken for an infix operator:

x = -23 :: Int
y = 0x17 :: Int
z = complement (-24) :: Int

Integers used as types are considered to have kind Int. Unlike value-level Ints, which must be representable as a 32-bit signed integer, type-level Ints are unbounded. Hexadecimal support is also supported at the type level.

type One :: Int
type One = 1

type Beyond32BitSignedInt :: Int
type Beyond32BitSignedInt = 2147483648

type HexInt :: Int
type HexInt = 0x17

Negative integer literals at the type level must be wrapped in parentheses if the negation sign could be mistaken for an infix operator.

type NegativeOne = -1
foo :: Proxy (-1) -> ...

data String :: Type

A String. As in JavaScript, String values represent sequences of UTF-16 code units, which are not required to form a valid encoding of Unicode text (for example, lone surrogates are permitted).

Construct values of this type with literals, using double quotes ":

x = "hello, world" :: String

Multi-line string literals are also supported with triple quotes ("""):

x = """multi
   line"""

At the type level, string literals represent types with kind Symbol. These types will have kind String in a future release:

type Hello :: Symbol
type Hello = "Hello, world"

data Char :: Type

A single character (UTF-16 code unit). The JavaScript representation is a normal String, which is guaranteed to contain one code unit. This means that astral plane characters (i.e. those with code point values greater than 0xFFFF) cannot be represented as Char values.

Construct values of this type with literals, using single quotes ':

x = 'a' :: Char

data Boolean :: Type

A JavaScript Boolean value.

Construct values of this type with the literals true and false.

The True and False types defined in Prim.Boolean have this type as their kind.

class Partial 

The Partial type class is used to indicate that a function is partial, that is, it is not defined for all inputs. In practice, attempting to use a partial function with a bad input will usually cause an error to be thrown, although it is not safe to assume that this will happen in all cases. For more information, see purescript-partial.

data Type :: Type

Type is the kind of all proper types: those that classify value-level terms. For example the type Boolean has kind Type; denoted by Boolean :: Type.

data Constraint :: Type

Constraint is the kind of type class constraints. For example, a type class declaration like this:

class Semigroup a where
  append :: a -> a -> a

has the kind signature:

class Semigroup :: Type -> Constraint

data Symbol :: Type

Symbol is the kind of type-level strings.

Construct types of this kind using the same literal syntax as documented for strings.

type Hello :: Symbol
type Hello = "Hello, world"

data Row :: Type -> Type

Row is the kind constructor of label-indexed types which map type-level strings to other types. The most common use of Row is Row Type, a row mapping labels to basic (of kind Type) types:

type ExampleRow :: Row Type
type ExampleRow = ( name :: String, values :: Array Int )

This is the kind of Row expected by the Record type constructor. More advanced row kinds like Row (Type -> Type) are used much less frequently.