[Haskell-cafe] Re: what is inverse of mzero and return?

Keean Schupke k.schupke at imperial.ac.uk
Sun Jan 23 04:50:13 EST 2005


Jorge Adriano Aires wrote:

>On the list monad, I think of the mplus operation as the "union" two 
>non-deterministic states. Mzero is the state that works as the identity 
>(which is when you have no possible state at all). 
>  
>
Okay... thats a definition of a monoid.

>>What would happen if this was the definition?
>>
>>instance MonadPlus [] where
>>   mzero = []
>>   mplus a b
>>
>>       | a == [] = b
>>       | otherwise = a
>>    
>>
Isn't the above a monoid as well?

    a `mplus` [] = a
    [] `mplus` b = b

Still looks like an identity to me....

Is there only on correct definition of a monad/monoid on lists - or does 
anything that satisfies the monad laws count? I got the impression you 
could define anthing you liked for mzero and mplus - providing the laws 
are upheld?

>
>Then, I'd say you're not thinking of monadic sums, but of catching errors, and 
>the appropriate place for that is the class MonadError. 
>  
>
I am thinking about how some monads are summed - like Maybe and
the Parser monad.

It seems there are two possibilities - either the definitions of MonadPlus
for Maybe and Parser monads are in Error, or there can be two different
acceptable definitions of MonadPlus on the List?

    Keean



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