[Haskell-beginners] let , equations, and monads

[Chaddaï Fouché]

Le mar. 3 nov. 2015 à 13:24, PATRICK BROWNE <patrick.browne at dit.ie> a
écrit :

> Chaddaï,
> Thank you very much for your response to my question. It confirms my
> intuition, but I was not sure.
>
> Is it true in general that let expressions (e.g. eligibleLet) are always
> semantically equivalent to their equational  counterparts (e.g.
> eligibleEquational)?
>

Yes, in Haskell that is true because it is pure/referentially transparent
(absent case of misuse of the "escape hatch"es like unsafePerformIO). That
is one of the big advantage : that you're always able to reason
equationally. (note that this remains true with monads, they're not impure,
they're just a notation that can describe impure computations)


> Would it be fair to say that "let" is syntactic sugar for an equational
> equivalent? Or is there more to it?
>

"let x = stuff in expr" is syntactic sugar for "(\x -> expr) stuff"
basically. Though there's a few syntactical conveniences that complicate
the translation.


> With respect to the ordering of the operations is generally true that a
> monadic version is semantically equivalent to a set of "let expressions"
> in a nested if-then-else?
>

Well with the Maybe monad like here yes, though that's more of a nested
case-of. With IO this is more complicated, especially if you use forkIO
(concurrency).


>
> Thanks,
>

You're welcome !
-- 
Chaddaï
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