Programming Flix

Enums

Enumerated Types

Enumerated types are used to define a type that has a finite (enumerated) set of values. Enumerated types are useful for things such as modeling compass directions, the cards in a deck, and the days in a week.

For example, here is an enumeration of the days in a week:

enum Weekday {
    case Monday,
    case Tuesday,
    case Wednesday,
    case Thursday,
    case Friday,
    case Saturday,
    case Sunday
}

Here Monday, Tuesday and so on are referred to as the constructors of the enum.

We can refer to a weekday as Monday or Weekday.Monday. The latter is required if we have multiple enums in scope with similarly named constructors.

We can use pattern matching to destruct an enum value. For example:

enum Animal {
    case Cat,
    case Dog,
    case Giraffe
}

def isTall(a: Animal): Bool = match a {
    case Animal.Cat        => false
    case Animal.Dog        => false
    case Animal.Giraffe    => true
}

The function isTall takes a value of type Animal and performs a pattern match on it. If the value is Giraffe the function returns true. Otherwise it returns false.

Flix guarantees that pattern matches are exhaustive, i.e. that all cases have been covered. It is a compile-time error if a pattern match is non-exhaustive. A pattern match can always be made exhaustive by adding a default case as the last case. A default case is written with an underscore case _ => ???.

Recursive Types

Recursive types are used to define types that are self-referential.

For example, we can define a binary tree of integers as follows:

enum Tree {
    case Leaf(Int32),
    case Node(Tree, Tree)
}

A tree is either a Leaf with an Int32 value or an internal Node with a left and a right sub-tree. Note that the definition of Tree refers to itself.

We can write a function, using pattern matching, to compute the sum of all integers in such a tree:

def sum(t: Tree): Int32 = match t {
    case Tree.Leaf(x)    => x
    case Tree.Node(l, r) => sum(l) + sum(r)
}

The sum function pattern matches on a tree value. If the tree is a leaf its value is simply returned. Otherwise the function recurses on both subtrees and adds their results.

Polymorphic Types

Polymorphic types are types parameterized by other types. For example, we can write:

enum Bottle[a] {
    case Empty,
    case Full(a)
}

def isEmpty(b: Bottle[a]): Bool = match b {
    case Bottle.Empty   => true
    case Bottle.Full(_) => false
}

Here the Bottle type is parameterized by the type parameter a. In Flix, type parameters, like ordinary parameters are always written in lowercase. The Bottle type has two cases: either the bottle is empty (and contains no value) or it is full (and contains one value of type a). The isEmpty function takes a bottle, type parameterized by a, and determines if the bottle is empty.

The careful reader might have noticed that Bottle is equivalent to the more well-known Option type.

In general, polymorphic types can have more than one type argument. For example, the standard library implement of the Result has two type parameters:

enum Result[e, t] {
    case Ok(t),
    case Err(e)
}

Shorthand Enum Syntax

A typical enum may look like:

enum Weekday {
    case Monday,
    case Tuesday,
    case Wednesday,
    case Thursday,
    case Friday,
    case Saturday,
    case Sunday
}

The same enum can also be declared as:

enum Weekday {
    case Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
}

This shorthand syntax is always available, but should only be used for simple enums.

Singleton Enum Syntax

An enum with a single case:

enum USD {
  case USD(Int32)
}

can be shortened to:

enum USD(Int32)