[Haskell-cafe] Adding Ord constraint to instance Monad Set?

[Tomasz Zielonka]

On Wed, Mar 31, 2004 at 08:48:35AM +0200, Wolfgang Jeltsch wrote:
> > Now, as i think a little more about it, i believe what you want to do makes
> > no sense. The monad operation '>>=' works on monads over *different*
> > 'element' (i.e. argument) types (look at the type of '>>='). Your
> > implementation only works if argument types are the same. I can't see how
> > this can be generalized to different argument types even if both are
> > instances of class Ord.
> 
> I disagree.  AFAICS, his implementation also works with different element 
> types.  Am I overlooking something?

I think the real issue is that you can't restrict the types on which
monad operates without modifying the Monad class.

Think about this code:

  f :: Monad m => a -> m a
  f x = do
      return id
      return putStrLn
      return x

It shouldn't be used in a Set monad, because it internally operates on
uncomparable values, but the type signature doesn't reflect this fact.


You can try to define a different version of Monad using multiparameter
type classes, something like:

    class M m a b where
	(>>>=) :: m a -> (a -> m b) -> m b
	...

but it would complicate type signature contexts a lot, for example you
would have

  (\a b c d -> a >>>= b >>>= c >>>= d) 
      :: forall m a b b1 b2.
	  (M m b1 b2, M m b b1, M m a b) =>
	  m a -> (a -> m b) -> (b -> m b1) -> (b1 -> m b2) -> m b2

instead of

  (\a b c d -> a >>= b >>= c >>= d) 
      :: forall m a b b1 b2.
	  (Monad m) =>
	  m a -> (a -> m b) -> (b -> m b1) -> (b1 -> m b2) -> m b2

Best regards,
Tom

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