[Haskell-beginners] How to interpret the definition of MonadState

[Ertugrul Soeylemez]

djp at arqux.com wrote:

> >> class Monad m => MonadState s m | m -> s where
> >>
> >> It is the vertical bar | that confuses me. What does that mean? How
> >> would one read this line in "natural language", say English?
> >
> > The vertical bar signifies a functional dependency (cf. the ghc
> > users' guide for details). It says here, that the monad determines
> > the type of the state.
>
> Does that mean it's ghc specific, i.e. not in Haskell 98 / 2010?

It's a type system extension, which is not in any standard.  But
associated types (a special kind of type families) serve essentially the
same purpose in a cleaner way.

    class MonadState m where
        type StateOf m
        get :: m (StateOf m)
        put :: StateOf m -> m ()

    instance MonadState (State s) where
        type StateOf (State s) = s
        ...

This is equivalent to the definition with fundeps.  You can find
TF-based monad transformer libraries.  Their package names usually end
with "-tf" to indicate this.


Greets,
Ertugrul


-- 
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