[Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] Top Level <-

[Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH]

On 2008 Aug 27, at 12:12, Jonathan Cast wrote:
> * I wonder why that name was chosen?  The design doesn't seem to have
> anything to do with IO, it's more of a `we have this in C so we want  
> it
> in Haskell too' monad.


As I understand it, "IO" means "anything not encompassed by  
equationally-reasoned visible program state".  This includes  
randomness (the IO-based aspect of which requires process or OS  
state).  This also encompasses mutable state (e.g. IORefs), since  
mutability doesn't fit with equational reasoning.  So the name is  
perhaps poorly chosen, because it only encompasses the most common  
visible application.  (And IORefs particularly so, since they're only  
so named by analogy with STRefs.)

-- 
brandon s. allbery [solaris,freebsd,perl,pugs,haskell] allbery at kf8nh.com
system administrator [openafs,heimdal,too many hats] allbery at ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon university    KF8NH