[Haskell-beginners] definition of combinator

[Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH]

On Aug 23, 2009, at 20:44 , Michael Mossey wrote:
> Although I can use libraries like Parsec, I don't really understand  
> what a combinator is, theoretically. There is an article here


Example:  in Parsec, "many" is a combinator which takes a parser as an  
argument and produces a parser that matches multiple successive copies  
of whatever the argument matches.  It doesn't need to know anything  
about its argument except that it's a parser.  This kind of function  
lets you build up complex but general parsers from smaller pieces.

-- 
brandon s. allbery [solaris,freebsd,perl,pugs,haskell] allbery at kf8nh.com
system administrator [openafs,heimdal,too many hats] allbery at ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon university    KF8NH


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