[Haskell-beginners] Re: Mixing IO and other monads

[Brian Victor]

Sorry it took so long, but I have to thank everyone who responded.  You
all gave me some good ideas.

Brandon's approach most closely resembled what I'm going with for the
moment.  I did have to make a few changes, which are shown below for
archival purposes.  The changes are:

    1) Made the first parameter to ioE a String since fail requires it.
    2) Switched left/right in io since that's how PortMidi does it.
    3) Added (Show e) constraint to io
    4) Added return to the Just and Left branches of the case.


ioE :: String -> IO (Maybe a) -> IO a
ioE e a = a >>= \r -> case r of
                        Just r' -> return r'
                        Nothing -> fail e

io :: (Show e) => IO (Either a e) -> IO a
io a = a >>= \r -> case r of
                      Left v  -> return v
                      Right e -> fail $ show e

main :: IO ()
main = do
  initialize
  inputDeviceId <- ioE "No default input device" getDefaultInputDeviceID
  outputDeviceId <- ioE "No default output device" getDefaultOutputDeviceID
  inputStream <- io $ openInput inputDeviceId
  outputStream <- io $ openOutput outputDeviceId 0
  putStrLn "Starting translation"
  runTranslationLoop inputStream outputStream


Thanks again!

-- 
Brian