[Haskell-cafe] Re: The State Monad

[Ben Lippmeier]

John Goerzen wrote:
> Which leaves me with an odd curiosity -- I still can't figure out how
> state monads are anything but syntactic sugar (and lead more to
> spaghetti code at that <g>)

Perhaps because state monads = syntactic sugar.

The state monad is just a nice(er) way of passing around some global 
state (Junk).

Without state monads
f :: Junk -> a -> (Junk, b)

With state monads,
f :: a -> State Junk b


....
Though if some function doesn't need to 'modify' your Junk, you find 
yourself having to re-factor things like,

decend :: Junk -> Exp -> Exp
decend state (Node a t1 t2)
  = Node a (decend state t1) (decend state t2)

into

decend :: Exp -> State Junk Exp
decend (Node a t1 t2)
  = do
	t1'	<- decend t1
	t2'	<- decend t2

	return   $ Node a t1' t2'


.. which IMHO is not as pretty.

Ben.