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Concept
Function type
Summary
In computer science and mathematical logic, a function type (or arrow type or exponential) is the type of a variable or parameter to which a function has or can be assigned, or an argument or result type of a higher-order function taking or returning a function.
A function type depends on the type of the parameters and the result type of the function (it, or more accurately the unapplied type constructor · → ·, is a higher-kinded type). In theoretical settings and programming languages where functions are defined in curried form, such as the simply typed lambda calculus, a function type depends on exactly two types, the domain A and the range B. Here a function type is often denoted A → B, following mathematical convention, or BA, based on there existing exactly BA (exponentially many) set-theoretic functions mappings A to B in the . The class of such maps or functions is called the exponential object. The act of currying makes the function type adjoint to the product type; this is explored in detail in the article on currying.
The function type can be considered to be a special case of the dependent product type, which among other properties, encompasses the idea of a polymorphic function.
The syntax used for function types in several programming languages can be summarized, including an example type signature for the higher-order function composition function:
When looking at the example type signature of, for example C#, the type of the function is actually Func.
Due to type erasure in C++11's std::function, it is more common to use templates for higher order function parameters and type inference (auto) for closures.
The function type in programming languages does not correspond to the space of all set-theoretic functions. Given the countably infinite type of natural numbers as the domain and the booleans as range, then there are an uncountably infinite number (2א0 = c) of set-theoretic functions between them.
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Related concepts (27)
Simply typed lambda calculus
The simply typed lambda calculus (), a form of type theory, is a typed interpretation of the lambda calculus with only one type constructor () that builds function types. It is the canonical and simplest example of a typed lambda calculus. The simply typed lambda calculus was originally introduced by Alonzo Church in 1940 as an attempt to avoid paradoxical use of the untyped lambda calculus. The term simple type is also used to refer extensions of the simply typed lambda calculus such as products, coproducts or natural numbers (System T) or even full recursion (like PCF).
Function type
In computer science and mathematical logic, a function type (or arrow type or exponential) is the type of a variable or parameter to which a function has or can be assigned, or an argument or result type of a higher-order function taking or returning a function. A function type depends on the type of the parameters and the result type of the function (it, or more accurately the unapplied type constructor · → ·, is a higher-kinded type).
First-class function
In computer science, a programming language is said to have first-class functions if it treats functions as first-class citizens. This means the language supports passing functions as arguments to other functions, returning them as the values from other functions, and assigning them to variables or storing them in data structures. Some programming language theorists require support for anonymous functions (function literals) as well.
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