[airstrike]

Very cool, thanks for sharing. I wonder how easy it would be to port this to Rust, just for the heck of it...

One minor thought: where you have `A Tree is either a Leaf or a Node containing 2 branches each containing another Tree structure.`, perhaps you could have `A Tree is either a Leaf or a Node _made of_ 2 branches each containing another Tree structure.`

So that "made of" easily maps to the "of" in F#'s type definition. Just an idea.

[itishappy]

Given that the book opens by defining a recursive datatype, it would be an exercise in frustration to port this to Rust...

[airstrike]

How so? Can't you just put your Tree in a Box?

    enum Tree {
        Leaf,
        Node(Box<Tree>, Box<Tree>),
    }

    fn number_of_leaves(tree: &Tree) -> u32 {
        match tree {
            Tree::Leaf => 1,
            Tree::Node(left, right) => number_of_leaves(left) + number_of_leaves(right),
        }
    }

    #[cfg(test)]
    mod tests {
        use super::*;

        #[test]
        fn counts_the_number_of_leaves_in_a_tree() {
            let tree_with_3_leaves = Tree::Node(
                Box::new(Tree::Leaf),
                Box::new(Tree::Node(
                    Box::new(Tree::Leaf),
                    Box::new(Tree::Leaf),
                )),
            );

            let leaves = number_of_leaves(&tree_with_3_leaves);

            assert_eq!(leaves, 3);
        }
    }

[marcosdumay]

Yes, and the frustration is on dealing with all the boxes and unboxing, at the exact correct place, and that won't unify with each other.

There's a sibling comment about porting it to C#. The Rust version will be less frustrating than the C#, but it is the same kind of bad.

On Rust specifically, this happens because Rust is a low level language.

[neonsunset]

The sibling comment looks way closer to port of Go which is rather unidiomatic C#. I understand where it is coming from, but there is a much terser and type-safe way to express it:

    #pragma warning disable CS8509 // The switch expression does not handle all possible values.
    // Justification: The switch expression is exhaustive, and Roslyn emits optimal default guard.
    // In AOT, ILC should be able to statically prove by whole program view that only two subclasses of Tree exist and optimize it away.
    // In practice, it seems null check and recursive nature of the call prevent it for now. It is still compact and fast codegen however.

    var treeWith3Leaves = new Tree.Node(
        new Tree.Leaf(),
        new Tree.Node(
            new Tree.Leaf(),
            new Tree.Leaf()));

    var leaves = NumberOfLeaves(treeWith3Leaves);
    if (leaves != 3) {
        throw new Exception("Huh, something went wrong.");
    }

    static int NumberOfLeaves(Tree tree) {
        return tree switch {
            Tree.Leaf   => 1,
            Tree.Node n => NumberOfLeaves(n.Left) + NumberOfLeaves(n.Right)
        };
    }

    abstract record Tree {
        public record Leaf: Tree;
        public record Node(Tree Left, Tree Right): Tree;
    }

Once we have type unions[0], the syntax could be easily promoted (assuming current proposal state) to e.g.

    union Tree {
        Leaf;
        Node(Tree Left, Tree Right);
    }

Or a bit lower-level variant:

    record Node(Tree Left, Tree Right);

    union struct Tree {
        Leaf;
        Node;
    }

This will allow to remove exhaustiveness suppression and not pay for (house of) leaves.

[0]: https://github.com/dotnet/csharplang/blob/18a527bcc1f0bdaf54...

[itishappy]

Geez, that's way easier than I remembered. When I originally encountered this while learning Rust I figured recursion was my problem and switched to learning Haskell. (No regrets.) I guess I need to take my findings back to Rust!

[arialdomartini]

Cool idea! Thank you for the suggestion. Fixed!

[airstrike]

Happy to contribute even if in a minuscule way :-) FYI you changed the definition when it first appears, but not in the shaded box when you repeat it later in Chapter 1