How to provide explicit type declarations for functions when using GHCi?

Question

How to I define the equivalent of this function (taken from learnyouahaskell) inside GHCi?

import Data.List    numUniques :: (Eq a) => [a] -> Int   numUniques = length . nub   

Without the type declaration, GHCi accepts the function definition, but it ends up with an unhelpful type:

Prelude Data.List> import Data.List  Prelude Data.List> let numUniques' = length . nub Prelude Data.List> :t numUniques' numUniques' :: [()] -> Int 

The resulting function only accepts a list of units as a parameter.

Is there a way provide type declarations in GHCi? Or is there another way to define functions like these which doesn't require type declarations?

I saw no obvious clues in the GHCi guide, and experimented with expressions like the following (to no avail):

> let numUniques' = ((length . nub) :: (Eq a) => [a] -> Int) > :t numUniques' numUniques' :: [()] -> Int 

Answer 1

Is there a way provide type declarations in GHCi?

let numUniques' :: (Eq a) => [a] -> Int; numUniques' = length . nub 

Or is there another way to define functions like these which doesn't require type declarations?

If you turn off the monomorphism restriction with -XNoMonomorphismRestriction, it will infer the right type.

Answer 2

Note that you can also avoid the monomorphism restriction simply by adding "points" (i.e. explicit variables) back to your expression. So this also gives the correct type:

let numUniques x = length . nub $ x