Tuple

A tuple is a finite ordered list of elements. In mathematics, an n-tuple is a sequence (or ordered list) of n elements, where n is a non-negative integer. There is only one 0-tuple, an empty sequence. An n-tuple is defined inductively using the construction of an ordered pair. Tuples are usually written by listing the elements within parentheses "" and separated by commas; for example, denotes a 5-tuple. Sometimes other symbols are used to surround the elements, such as square brackets "[ ]" or angle brackets "< >". Braces "{ }" are never used for tuples, as they are the standard notation for sets. Tuples are often used to describe other mathematical objects, such as vectors. In computer science, tuples are directly implemented as product types in most functional programming languages. More commonly, they are implemented as record types, where the components are labeled instead of being identified by position alone. This approach is also used in relational algebra. Tuples are also used in relation to programming the semantic web with Resource Description Framework or RDF. Tuples are also used in linguistics and philosophy.

Product type

In programming languages and type theory, a product of types is another, compounded, type in a structure. The "operands" of the product are types, and the structure of a product type is determined by the fixed order of the operands in the product. An instance of a product type retains the fixed order, but otherwise may contain all possible instances of its primitive data types. The expression of an instance of a product type will be a tuple, and is called a "tuple type" of expression. A product of types is a direct product of two or more types.

If there are only two component types, it can be called a "pair type". For example, if two component types A and B are the set of all possible values that type, the product type written A × B contains elements that are pairs (a,b), where "a" and "b" are instances of A and B respectively. The pair type is a special case of the dependent pair type, where the type B may depend on the instance picked from A.

In many languages, product types take the form of a record type, for which the components of a tuple can be accessed by label. In languages that have algebraic data types, as in most functional programming languages, algebraic data types with one constructor are isomorphic to a product type.