Kind

Wikipedia says, "In type theory, a kind is the type of a type constructor or, less commonly, the type of a higher-order type operator. A kind system is essentially a simply typed lambda calculus 'one level up,' endowed with a primitive type, denoted * and called 'type', which is the kind of any (monomorphic) data type."

Ordinary types have kind *. Type constructors have kind P -> Q, where P and Q are kinds. For instance:

Int :: *
Maybe :: * -> *
Maybe Bool :: *
a -> a :: *
[] :: * -> *
(->) :: * -> * -> *

In Haskell 98, * is the only inhabited kind, that is, all values have types of kind *. GHC introduces another inhabited kind, #, for unlifted types.

See also

• GHC/Kinds
• Kinds on the GHC Commentary
• TypeType on the GHC Commentary
• Kinds ?, ??, # and (#)
• Pierce, Benjamin. Types and Programming Languages.