independant monads used together?

[Pixel]

Jan-Willem Maessen <jmaessen@alum.mit.edu> writes:

> Pixel <pixel@mandrakesoft.com> asks:
> > I'm trying to achieve something like (ocaml)
> >   [code deleted]
> > which is a foldl on 2 iterators. I've managed to use monads for one iterator,
> > but i completly miss the way to work with 2 monads. Is there really no other
> > solution than creating a monad over the 2 iterators??
> 
> Why monadic iterators at all?  One of the great things about lazy
> lists is they encapsulate iteration nicely:  Elements can be generated
> as they're consumed. 

oops, i forgot this. /me was trying to translate from a language to another
without thinking :-(

of course, an iterator over a structure is a "to_list" function. /me bad

[...]

> You're having trouble combining the results of two state monads
> precisely because they're manipulating two *independent* pieces of
> state, and you're trying to combine the *states* of the monads in some
> fashion.  What should the type of the result of the manipulation be?
> Where are the initial states of each computation coming from?

I don't quite understand those questions. Combining states is a common task in
imperative world.

I must be missing something. I still don't understand what is to be done to
mix monads. As far as I've seen the only really used monad is IO. So I can't
find useful examples using the standard library.
But suppose I have GUI which interacts via the gui and has getLine' and
print', how can i do something that:

- getLine on IO, getLine' on GUI
- verify it is the same
- print on IO, print' on GUI
- ...
 
> Some computations really are much more easily done in the value domain
> then under a wrapper like a monad which obscures their real structure.

Well, the intention was to hide the real structure :)
But i agree i missed something simple...


thanks, Pixel.