Polymorphic and Overloaded Types

We have already touched upon polymorphic types in ourtriplefunction when we made it possible to triple both integers and floating-point numbers. We usedNum ain the function's type signature to specify that it can accept both number types as arguments. The Num is a class constraint and a is the type variable and our function signature triple :: Num a => a -> a reads as "for any type a that is an instance of the class Num, the function triple has the type a -> a".
Any type that has a class constraint is called an overloaded type, and hence ourtriplefunction is an overloaded function. We can even also specify a type variable without the class constraint, in which case that type is completely polymorphic and any type can fill the arguments' place. For example, this is used in several list functions we used earlier, as their results do not depend on the types of elements that fill the lists. For example, the head (return the first element of a list) and tail (return the list excluding the first element) functions must work regardless of what type the elements in the list are. Therefore, their type signatures are:
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head :: [a] -> a
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-- a list of type a's returns a type a, whatever type a is for that list
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​
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tail :: [a] -> [a]
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-- a list of type a's returns a type [a], whatever type a is for that list
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