[Haskell-beginners] Are monads pure?

[Amy de Buitléir]

Threading state is something that the State monad does and it is

> purely functional - showing that a monad *can* be pure but don't have
> to be. Other monads, like IO as you have stated, have side effects.
>

Thank you, that helps.


> At the end of the day I found that the monad is very, very general and
> it's best way to think about it as a piece of data wrapped in some
> type. With a monad you can
> 1. takes some data and wraps it up in a type (return) :
> a -> m a
> 2. apply a function to the data within the type (>>=).
> m a -> (a -> m b) -> m b
>

But if that's all you need to do, you could just use an Applicative Functor,
right? The picture I have at the moment is:

Functors can apply a function to a value inside a container.

Applicative functors provide pure expressions and sequencing, but no
binding. All applicative functors are also functors.

Arrows provide a way to set up more complicated pipelines with "tee"
junctions, etc. All arrows are also applicative functors (?)

Monads add binding. All monads are also arrows.
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