[Haskell-beginners] Working With TVars

[Brent Yorgey]

> 
> But getA returns an STM Int, so I still have to do a :
> > doSomethingWithA = do
> > a' <- (getA mySTM)
> > case a' of
> >    1 -> doStuff
> >    0 -> doSomethingElse
> 
> This doesn't really save me a lot of boilerplate. What is the best way of
> writing a function that just returns my values do I can work with them in
> the STM monad without unpacking them all the time?

You can't; that is the whole point.  However, there are ways to save
some typing.  For example, you could use (>>=), which the do-notation
desugars to anyway:

  doSomethingWithA = getA mySTM >>= \a' -> case a' of ...

In this case, that doesn't actually save that much, I guess.  But you
could go much further.  For example, if you often find yourself doing
case analysis on the value of a, you could write something like

  caseA :: STM e -> STM e -> STM e
  caseA act1 act2 = do
    a' <- (getA mySTM)
    case a' of
      1 -> act1
      0 -> act2

Then you could just write 'caseA doStuff doSomethingElse'.

And if you wanted something more general than just matching on 1 or 0,
you could write (say)

  caseA' :: [(Int, STM e)] -> STM e
 
And so on.  The trick is to abstract out the common patterns in your
code.  Haskell is really good at this---if you find yourself typing
the same boilerplate over and over again, there's (often) a way to
abstract out the commonality.

-Brent