CODEWITHSUNDEEP
f#recursiondiscriminated-unionmutual-recursion
mavnn
mavnn

Reputation: 9469

Can discriminated unions refer to each other?

I'm building an expression tree using discriminated unions. The below code:

type IntExpression =
    | TrueIsOne of BoolExpression

type BoolExpression =
    | LessThan of IntExpression * IntExpression
    | And of BoolExpression * BoolExpression
    | Or of BoolExpression * BoolExpression
    | Bool of bool

throws an error because BoolExpression is not defined. Swapping the definitions just results in the reverse (IntExpression is not defined) as you would expect.

Is there a way around this?

Upvotes: 14

Views: 812

Answers (3)

John Reynolds
John Reynolds

Reputation: 5057

"and" works generally for types with mutual dependencies. That is, it works for all types, such as discriminated unions, as shown by Mau, classes, records and mutually recursive functions.

Non terminating example:

let rec foo x = bar x
and bar x = foo x

Upvotes: 9

Mau
Mau

Reputation: 14468

Yes, use and to group type definitions with inter-dependencies:

type IntExpression =
    | TrueIsOne of BoolExpression

and BoolExpression =
    | LessThan of IntExpression * IntExpression
    | And of BoolExpression * BoolExpression
    | Or of BoolExpression * BoolExpression
    | Bool of bool

Upvotes: 23

stakx - no longer contributing
stakx - no longer contributing

Reputation: 84755

Perhaps this will work:

type IntExpression =
  ...
and BoolExpression = 
  ...

(Information taken from this page on MSDN.)

Upvotes: 4

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