[Haskell-cafe] Monad Imparative Usage Example

[Brian Hulley]

Ooops - more bugs in my explanation...

Brian Hulley wrote:
>   -- from State.hs
>    newtype State s a = S (s -> (a,s))

I used the source given in ghc-6.4.2\libraries\monads\Monad\State.hs but the 
version of state monad that comes with the hierarchical libs is in 
ghc-6.4.2\libraries\mtl\Control\Monad\State.hs - the bits related to the 
explanation behave in the same way but you might find it interesting to 
decide which implementation is more readable since mtl uses record syntax 
and the other version doesn't.

>     q >>= (\x -> p)
>
> means that both q and p are expressions that evaluate to monadic
> values ie values whose type is of the form
>
>    S (s -> (a, s))
> So we have:
>
>    q :: S (s -> (a, s))
>    (\x -> p) :: a -> S (s -> (b, s))

Ooops! I meant:

      q :: State s a
      (\x -> p) :: a -> State s b

therefore the *value* of q is of the form S (s -> (a,s)) and the value of 
(\x -> p) is of the form (a -> S(s -> (b, s)))

>
> To make the explanation simpler, we can rename the variables in the
> definition of >>= to reflect their types:
                                            ^^^^^^^^
       "to reflect the structure of their values"

Apologies for the millions of corrections and re-posts for this 
explanation - no matter how hard I try to proof read my posts something 
always slips through... ;-)

Regards, Brian.