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I'm a C# developer who is working through "Real World Haskell" in order to truly understand functional programming, so that when I learn F#, I'll really grok it and not just "write C# code in F#", so to speak. Well, today I came across an example which I thought I understood 3 different times, only to then see something I missed, update my interpretation, and recurse (and curse too, believe me). Now I believe that I do actually understand it, and I have written a detailed "English interpretation" below. Can you Haskell gurus please confirm that understanding, or point out what I have missed? Note: The Haskell code snippet (quoted directly from the book) is defining a custom type that is meant to be isomorphic to the built in Haskell list type. The Haskell code snippet data List a = Cons a (List a) | Nil defining Show EDIT: After some responses, I see one misunderstanding I made, but am not quite clear on the Haskell "parsing" rules that would correct that mistake. So I've included my original (incorrect) interpretation below, followed by a correction, followed by the question that still remains unclear to me. EDIT: Here is my original (incorrect) "English interpretation" of the snippet I am defining a type called "List". The List type is parameterised. It has a single type parameter. There are 2 value constructors which can be used to make instances of List. One value constructor is called "Nil" and the other value constructor is called "Cons". If you use the "Nil" value constructor, then there are no fields. The "Cons" value constructor has a single type parameter. If you use the "Cons" value constructor, there are 2 fields which must be provided. The first required field is an ins

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