hubFS: THE place for F#

Hi

I am a newbie to F#, I am trying to create a function abc that takes an integer parameter and returns a float value. How do i declare the function. ? If i attempt as following , I  get the error as "This expression has type  float but is here used with type  int  "

let quad x:int = 2.0

Can any one please help ?
Can any one also specify a good tutorial to start F# ?

Thanks n Regards
Anu Viswan

You need to learn to let go of type declartions, a lot of the time in F# you have no need for them, you could just write:

let quad x = 2.0

The function will return type float because 2.0 is a float. The parameter x is not used so it will be a generic parameter 'a. If you want to take an int and return a float you just need to explicitly convert your int to a float and the compiler will infer that the parameters an int:

let quad x = float x * 2.0

Chris Smith's F# in twenty minutes is probably the best tutorial for F# beginners:
http://blogs.msdn.com/chrsmith/archive/2008/05/02/f-in-20-minutes-part-i.aspx

"Foundations of F#" would probably help too if you were looking to buy a book.

Cheers,
Rob

---

Robert Pickering, MVP
http://strangelights.com

Hi Rob

Thanks for reply, But my purpose was different.
I had a function which takes an input X of type ABC.
ABC is user declared type which contains a 1 float and 2 integers.

type ABC=
{
a:int;
b:int;
c:float;
}


I want to pass an instance of this type to a function and which returns a type int.

let quad x:ABC= (x.a + x.b)

But when i attempt this i get error. Can you please help in same ??

Thanks n Regards
Anu Viswan

This too is okay without type annotations, because the type of record types can be infered from their members (if the members are unquie within the scope):

type ABC=
  { a:int;
    b:int;
    c:float; }
let quad x = (x.a + x.b)

But if you do need a type annotation for a parameter you need to put brackets round it, without brackets its the return type of the function that your are declaring:

let quad (x:ABC) = (x.a + x.b)

Cheers,
Rob

---

Robert Pickering, MVP
http://strangelights.com