[Haskell-beginners] Monads

[Brent Yorgey]

On Fri, Mar 04, 2011 at 05:20:27PM -0500, Patrick Lynch wrote:
>
> I'd love to take a crack at Category Theory [my mathematics is good]
> but this looks like a formidable task...

It is not that formidable just to get started.  But it is so abstract
that it can be difficult to gain intuition for.  If you want to learn
some category theory I recommend Awodey's book.

> I'll proceed using the Monad classes and instances as is - and hope
> that at some point I'll be able to create my own Monads...

Creating one's own monads is overrated.  I almost never do it.
Usually I can just put something together using monad transformers
that fits my needs.

> 
> btw: can you create a class in Haskell -[I'm guessing the answer to
> this is no -- see below, it doesn't work]?
> 
>     class MyCalculator a where
>     myadd::( Num a) => a -> a -> a
>     myAdd x y = x + y

Sure, you can do that.  What do you mean when you say that it doesn't
work? 

-Brent

> 
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brent Yorgey"
> <byorgey at seas.upenn.edu>
> To: <beginners at haskell.org>
> Cc: "Patrick Lynch" <kmandpjlynch at verizon.net>
> Sent: Friday, March 04, 2011 3:07 PM
> Subject: Re: [Haskell-beginners] Monads
> 
> 
> >On Wed, Mar 02, 2011 at 04:38:07PM -0500, Patrick Lynch wrote:
> >>
> >>----- Original Message ----- From: "Brent Yorgey"
> >><byorgey at seas.upenn.edu>
> >>To: <beginners at haskell.org>
> >>Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2011 10:37 AM
> >>Subject: Re: [Haskell-beginners] Monads
> >>
> >>
> >>>On Wed, Mar 02, 2011 at 10:04:38AM -0500, Patrick Lynch wrote:
> >>>>Daniel,
> >>>>Thank you...I understand now...
> >>>>Good day
> >>>>
> >>>>    instance Functor Maybe where
> >>>>      fmap f (Just x) = Just (f x)
> >>>>      fmap f Nothing = Nothing
> >>>
> >>>So you are confused about this code?  Can you be more specific what
> >>>you are confused about?  Try thinking carefully about all the types
> >>>involved.  What is the type of f? (You already answered this: a -> b.)
> >>>What is the type of (Just x)? The type of x?  What type is required on
> >>>the right hand side of the = ?  And so on.
> >>
> >>
> >>-Hi Brent
> >>I know that Maybe type is: data Maybe a = Nothing | Just a
> >>...so, I assume that the type to the right of the '=' should be
> >>Maybe a..
> >
> >Not quite.  Let's look again at the type of fmap here:
> >
> > fmap :: (a -> b) -> Maybe a -> Maybe b
> >
> >So fmap will be taking *two* parameters, the first of type (a -> b),
> >the second of type Maybe a.  Then it needs to return something of type
> >Maybe b (so this is what will be on the right hand side of the =).
> >
> >>    instance Functor Maybe where
> >>      fmap Nothing = Nothing
> >>      fmap Just x = Just x
> >
> >You're missing the first argument to fmap (the one of type a -> b).
> >Let's call it f.  Since the second argument is of type (Maybe a)
> >you're right that we should handle all cases (Nothing and Just).
> >
> > fmap f Nothing = Nothing
> >
> >so here we need to return something of type 'Maybe b'.  Well, we don't
> >have any values of type b, so the only thing we can do is return
> >Nothing.
> >
> > fmap f (Just x) = ?
> >
> >The reason we need the parentheses around (Just x) is simply that
> >otherwise the compiler thinks we are writing a definition of fmap that
> >takes three arguments: f, Just, and x, but that doesn't make sense.
> >
> >Now, here f has type (a -> b), and (Just x) has type (Maybe a), hence
> >x has type a.  If we apply f to x we get something of type b, so we
> >can define
> >
> > fmap f (Just x) = Just (f x)
> >
> >Does that make sense?
> >
> >-Brent
>