Using string literal for symbols

In writing a compiler or an interpreter, it is common to define a symbol or identifier type which is distinct from String to make it more type-safe.

newtype Symbol = Symbol String

Now String and Symbol are distinct types and we can’t accidentally mix two. But it also means that we have to use Symbol constructor whenever we need to create a symbol from a string literal.

Symbol "main"

You can avoid this labor using the GHC extension, OverloadedStrings. By making Symbol an instance of IsString, GHC automatically coerces a string literal into a symbol.

{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-}
import Data.String

instance IsString Symbol where
    fromString = Symbol . fromString

s :: Symbol
s = "hello"