[Haskell-cafe] Why is this strict in its arguments?

[Jules Bean]

Alistair Bayley wrote:
> Nested Maybe cases put me in mind of the Maybe monad. Although in this
> case it''s not trivial; we also need to involve the Maybe [a] instance
> of Data.Monoid too (for the mappend function). I do wonder if I'm
> abusing the monadic instances of Maybe though; is this really any
> clearer than Jules' code?

I think the 'right' answer for this case is to drop the maybes and just 
use lists, which is what the OP himself realised. I often find that if I 
think I want a Monoid instance for Maybe [a], what I really want is to 
just use [a]. (Not always of course...).

> (BTW, this has probably come up before, but wouldn't it be a little
> bit nicer if "when" returned mzero rather than () in the "do nothing"
> case?)

Yes and no. I've wanted your when' once or twice, but the return () 
version is useful too...

Jules