[Haskell-cafe] Re: Re: ANN: First Monad Tutorial of the Season

[Hans van Thiel]

[snip]
> 
> Most probably you are confusing type and data constructor. This is a common
> error and a hurdle I remember falling over more than once. It is due to the
> fact that in Haskell both are in completely separate name spaces,
> nevertheless both use capitalized names. Thus people often use the same
> name for both, especially with newtype, as there may only be one data
> constructor. In your case you have
> 
>   newtype State s a = State { runState :: (s -> (a, s)) }
> 
> where the type constructor takes two (type-) arguments (even for a newtype
> it can take as many as you like), but the data constructor takes only one
> value as argument, namely a function from s to (a,s).
> 
> Clear now?
A newtype has only one data constructor, a data definition may have more
(when it contains a choice (|) operator). That's clear now.
> 
> >> Third, newtype is unlifted.
> > The books I use for reference, the Craft and SOE, don't seem to mention
> > this. I have to confess, I don't really understand the difference
> > between newtype and data. Again, an explanation would be appreciated.
> 
> Did Ryan's explanation help?
> 
> > As a general comment on the teaching of Haskell, all books and
> > tutorials, which I've seen, appear to treat this aspect of Haskell as if
> > it were self explanatory. This while the better known imperative
> > languages don't have anything like it. Only Real World Haskell explains
> > algebraic data types to some satisfaction (IMHO, of course).
> 
> This is one of the more difficult aspects Haskell, IME. I found the Haskell
> wiki book (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell) very useful, especially
> the chapter on denotational semantics
> (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/Denotational_semantics).
> 
The wikibook has a lot of good material, IMO. I'll certainly read that
chapter.
> If you have a background in imperative languages, especially low-level ones
> like C, then it may help to think of the values of a lifted type (data ...)
> as being represented by a pointer to the data proper (e.g. a struct),
> whereas values of an unlifted type (newtype ...) are represented exactly as
> the argument type. 
That makes sense to me. Thanks, everybody!
> A value of a lifted type always has one additional value
> in its type, namely bottom. You may think of bottom as being represented by
> a null pointer. In fact, one could say that, in Java, Objects are always
> lifted whereas basic types like integer are unlifted.
> 
> Now, before I get shot down by the purists, I know that this is not exactly
> true, since bottom is also the value of an infinite loop, so Java in fact
> has a 'real' bottom in addition to null, etc. See the above cited online
> book chapter for a more precise (and still very readable) treatment.
> 
> Cheers
> Ben
> 
>