[Haskell-beginners] How do I perform things inside a Monad?

[Martin Drautzburg]

On Thursday, 7. February 2013 23:25:32 Brent Yorgey wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 07, 2013 at 11:07:57PM +0100, Martin Drautzburg wrote:
> > Hello all,
> > 
> > In the ALSA Midi package, there is an example, where he first sets up
> > client, port, queue and stuff. All of these are IO actions, and there
> > are a number of nested "do"s. Then in the innermost "do" he has all the
> > pieces together and starts playing. In this case the actual "song" is
> > coded in the innermost do.
> > 
> > My question is: how can I inject a song from outside. Of course I could
> > make it another parameter, which would have to travel through all the
> > "do"s, but I already have more than enough parameters.
> 
> Just make it a parameter. If it is in scope, you can use it in the
> innermost 'do'.  I'm not sure what you mean by "travel through all the
> "do"s".  You don't have to do anything special to make this happen.
> Like so:
> 
> 
> foo bar baz = do
>   withFoo $ \foo -> do
>     blub
>     withOtherThing $ \thing -> do
>       blah
>       something bar baz
> 
> Notice how 'bar' and 'baz' are automatically in scope throughout the
> whole thing, even the innermost do.

The original code was written exactly in this style. Is this "$ \foo ->do" 
cascade some kind of idiom?

The thing is, I tried to split this monster up into several functions. For 
this, my functions got quite a number of parameters. Passing bar baz to the 
toplevel function would add even more parameters.

I understand why your suggestion works without "tramp" parameters.

But somehow I don't like "$ \foo ->do" cascades. It looks ugly and I do not 
fully understand the pattern and when and why it is needed. If there are 
situations which require three nested "do"s, then there might be situations 
which require 1000 nested "do"s. It just won't scale.

-- 
Martin