[Haskell-beginners] Why this order of parameters

martin martin.drautzburg at web.de
Thu Nov 12 15:52:06 UTC 2015


Hello all,

there are two functions, where the order of parameters confuses me. Ons is

runState :: State s a -> s -> (a, s)

I understand that in the constructor s has to be first, so we can turn (State s) into a monad. But why doesn't s come
first in the result too, as in

runState :: State s a -> s -> (s, a)


The other example is foldl, foldr

foldl :: (a -> b -> a) -> a -> [b] -> a
foldr :: (a -> b -> b) -> b -> [a] -> b

For once the list is a list of as in foldl, but a list of as in foldr. Now that can be fixed with renaming the type
parameters

foldr :: (b -> a -> a) -> a -> [b] -> a

this is the exact same thing and resembles more the type of foldl. But still the function argument has its parameters
flipped. foldl's function takes the list element as second parameter and foldr's takes it as first parameter.

Why is that so?


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