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Add Eq docs #1788

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4 changes: 4 additions & 0 deletions docs/src/main/resources/microsite/data/menu.yml
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -76,6 +76,10 @@ options:
url: typeclasses/invariantmonoidal.html
menu_section: variance

- title: Eq
url: typeclasses/eq.html
menu_type: typeclasses

- title: Foldable
url: typeclasses/foldable.html
menu_type: typeclasses
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71 changes: 71 additions & 0 deletions docs/src/main/tut/typeclasses/eq.md
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@@ -0,0 +1,71 @@
---
layout: docs
title: "Eq"
section: "typeclasses"
source: "kernel/src/main/scala/cats/kernel/Eq.scala"
scaladoc: "#cats.kernel.Eq"
---

# Eq

Eq is an alternative to the standard Java `equals` method.
It is defined by the single method `eqv`:

```scala
def eqv(x: A, y: A): Boolean
```

In Scala it's possible to compare any two values using `==` (which desugars to Java `equals`).
This is because `equals` type signature uses `Any` (Java's `Object`) to compare two values.
This means that we can compare two completely unrelated types without getting a compiler error.
The Scala compiler may warn us in some cases, but not all, which can lead to some weird bugs.
For example this code will raise a warning at compile time:


```tut:book:fail
42 == "Hello"
```

While this code will compile without a hitch:

```tut:book
"Hello" == 42
```

Ideally, Scala shouldn't let us compare two types that can never be equal.

As you can probably see in the type signature of `eqv`, it is impossible to compare two values of different types,
eliminating these types of bugs altogether.

The `Eq` syntax package also offers some handy symbolic operators:

```tut:book
import cats.implicits._

1 === 1

"Hello" =!= "World"
```

Implementing `Eq` instances yourself for every data type might seem like huge drawback compared to only slight gains of typesafety.
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we could mention fromUniversalEquals which should work fine for case classes.

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Done :)

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@gabro gabro Aug 9, 2017

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not sure this should go in the documentation, but I recently found this useful:

implicit def productEq[A <: Product]: Eq[A] = Eq.fromUniversalEquals

unless I'm missing something (and if so, please let me know!) fromUniversalEqual should work fine with any Product. This makes it incredibly easy for the users to provide a reasonable Eq instance for every case class.

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That's pretty interesting, seems like it would work for all case classes! Any known downsides?

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not that I know. We're using it in a project since a few weeks and so far so good.

That said, I'm far from being an expert :)

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I agree it's worth mentioning in the documentation.

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Added :)

Fortunately for us, we have two great options. One option is to use inbuilt helper functions.
Another option is to use a small library called [kittens](https://github.com/milessabin/kittens), which can derive a lot of type class instances for our data types including `Eq`.

The first option using `Eq.fromUniversalEquals` only defers to `==` and works like this:

```tut:book
import cats.kernel.Eq
import cats.implicits._


case class Foo(a: Int, b: String)


implicit val eqFoo: Eq[Foo] = Eq.fromUniversalEquals


Foo(10, "") === Foo(10, "")
```


For an example using Kittens check out the [kittens repo](https://github.com/milessabin/kittens).