Jump to content

Nullary constructor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Spoon! (talk | contribs) at 00:53, 16 October 2007 (propose merge). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

In computer programming, a nullary constructor is a constructor that takes no arguments.

Java example

public class Example 
{
   /* '''nullary constructor''' */
   public Example () {
      this(1);
   }

   /* non-nullary constructor */
   public Example (int data) {
      this.data = data;
   }

   protected int data;
}

Haskell example

-- nullary type constructor with two nullary data constructors
data Bool = False
          | True

-- non-nullary type constructor with non-nullary data constructor
data Point a = Point a a

-- nun-nullary type constructor with...
data Maybe a = Nothing  -- ...nullary data constructor
             | Just a   -- ...unary data constructor