[Haskell-cafe] Monad pronounced like gonad?

[Derek Elkins]

Andrew Coppin wrote:
> 
>>> ->
>>
>> "to"
>>
>>> <-
>>
>> "from", or "drawn from" for list comprehensions.
>>
>>> []
>>
>> "nil"
> 
> More curiosely, that (>>=) function. Why is the Haskell name for it 
> (>>=), and why is it pronounced "bind"? Neither of these choices make a 
> lot of sense to me...

(>>=) is chosen as it seems fairly nice when you use a sugar free monadic style,
foo x >>= \y ->
bar y >>= \z ->
return (y+z)

To understand why it's called "bind" look at common sugar for it, e.g. the above 
using do-notation and a "let" notation (e.g. monadic- or ]administrative- 
(A-)normal form):

do
     y <- foo x
     z <- bar y
     return (y+z)

letM y = foo x in
letM z = bar y in
y + z

So the effect of (>>=) is to bind the value produced by a monadic computation to 
some variable.  If we view impure languages as implicitly using a monad, their 
"let" statements (which bind variables to values) translate to exactly the above.