[Haskell-cafe] Newbie Q: composeMaybe :: (a -> Maybe b) -> (b -> Maybe c) -> (a -> Maybe c)

Dmitri O.Kondratiev dokondr at gmail.com
Thu Nov 9 05:16:47 EST 2006


Hey DeeJay,
Thanks for detailed answer, it really helps as it shows the way I need
to follow!
It also helped me to realize that my question why
f1 f g x = mapMaybe f (g x)
has this type:
f1 :: (a -> b) -> (t -> Maybe a) -> t -> Maybe b
and not that (type which I expected):
f1 :: (a -> b) -> (t -> Maybe a) -> Maybe b

was actually very stupid of me, as I just blindly missed that f1 *also
has* a third parameter 'x' of type 't' !!!
(Perhaps that happened to me because I was too much absorbed by the
grave nature of the problem of composing functions returning 'Maybe'
:)

Thanks again!
Dima

On 11/8/06, DeeJay-G615 <deejay at g615.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi Dmitri,
>
> your f1 function has 3 arguments, f, g and x.
>
> you pass f as the first argument to mapMaybe, so it naturally must have type (a
> -> b).
> you pass the result of (g x) to the second argument of mapMaybe, so (g x) must
> have type Maybe a. This means g must have the type (t -> Maybe a) where t is the
> type of x.
>
> This gives f1 :: (a -> b) -> (t -> Maybe a) -> t -> Maybe b
>
> you are going to be passing in something with type (c -> Maybe d) as the first
> argument to f1. (I used different type variables to reduce confusion)
>
> This constraint gives f1 the following type
>
> f1 :: (c -> Maybe d) -> (t -> Maybe c) -> t -> Maybe (Maybe d)
>
> substituting different type variable names gives
>
> f1 :: (b -> Maybe c) -> (a -> Maybe b) -> a -> Maybe (Maybe c)
>
> So you are very close to finishing... :)
> Hope this helps.
>
> DeeJay
>
> Dmitri O.Kondratiev wrote:
> > I am trying to solve a problem from "The Craft of Functional
> > Programming" book:
> >
> > 14.38 ... define the function:
> > data Maybe a = Nothing | Just a
> > composeMaybe :: (a -> Maybe b) -> (b -> Maybe c) -> (a -> Maybe c)
> >
> > using functions:
> >
> > squashMaybe :: Maybe (Maybe a) -> Maybe a
> > squashMaybe (Just (Just x)) = Just x
> > squashMaybe _ = Nothing
> >
> > mapMaybe :: (a -> b) -> Maybe a -> Maybe b
> > mapMaybe f Nothing = Nothing
> > mapMaybe f (Just x) = Just (f x)
> >
> > As a first step to the solution I defined auxilary function:
> > f1 f g x = mapMaybe f (g x)
> >
> > GHCi gives the following type for this function:
> >
> > f1 :: (a -> b) -> (t -> Maybe a) -> t -> Maybe b
> >                                              ^^^
> > Q: I don't quite understand this signature. I would expect this
> > instead (by mapMaybe definition):
> > f1 :: (a -> b) -> (t -> Maybe a) -> Maybe b
> >
> >> From where does the second 't' come from? What are the arguments and
> >
> > what f1 returns in this case?
> > _______________________________________________
> > Haskell-Cafe mailing list
> > Haskell-Cafe at haskell.org
> > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
> >
> >
> >
>
>


-- 
Dmitri O Kondratiev,
dokondr at gmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/dkondr/


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