[Haskell-cafe] What is MonadPlus good for?

Keean Schupke k.schupke at imperial.ac.uk
Mon Feb 14 07:33:09 EST 2005


Technically this is a use of MonadError, not MonadPlus (see earlier 
discussion about how IO is _not_ an instance of MonadPlus).

    Keean.

David Roundy wrote:

>On Sat, Feb 12, 2005 at 01:08:59PM -0500, Benjamin Pierce wrote:
>  
>
>>I have seen lots of examples that show how it's useful to make some type
>>constructor into an instance of Monad.
>>
>>Where can I find examples showing why it's good to take the trouble to show
>>that something is also a MonadPlus?  (I know there are many examples of
>>things that *are* MonadPluses; what I want to know is why this is
>>interesting. :-)
>>    
>>
>
>I've been working on a typeclass that derives from MonadPlus which will
>encapsulate certain kinds of IO.  With MonadPlus, you can write monadic
>code with exceptions and everything that may not be executed in the IO
>monad.  You just use fail to throw exceptions, and mplus to catch them.
>
>class MonadPlus m => ReadableDirectory m where
>    mInCurrentDirectory :: FilePath -> m a -> m a
>    mGetDirectoryContents :: m [FilePath]
>    mReadFilePS :: FilePath -> m PackedString
>    mReadFilePSs :: FilePath -> m [PackedString]
>    mReadFilePSs f = linesPS `liftM` mReadFilePS f
>
>One instance of this class is IO, but I can also have instances for
>in-memory data structures (outside the IO monad) or (or example) for
>reading a tarball from disk--which would be a monad that acts within the IO
>monad.
>  
>



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