Sum Type¶
A sum type is the result of the sum operation on two or more algebraic types. In most programming languages, this is expressed with a pipe character. For example in purescript the type Boolean can be expressed as
data Boolean = True | False
The cardinality of a sum type is the sum of all the cardinailities of it's constructors. |Boolean| = 2
data Maybe a = Nothing | Just a
|Maybe a| = 1 + |a|
The monoidal identity of the sum operation is the void type, as |Void| = 0.