[Haskell-cafe] using the writer monad to better understand foldl and foldr, and haskell debugging techniques in general

[Felipe Lessa]

On Feb 10, 2008 9:33 PM, Thomas Hartman <tphyahoo at gmail.com> wrote:
> -- using writer monad
> -- Nothing unsafe here, pure referrentially transparent goodness
> myfoldrW f z []     =  return z
> myfoldrW f z (x:xs) = do
>     r <- (myfoldrW f z xs)
>     tell ("x,r: " ++ (show (x,r)) ++ "\n" )
>     return $ x `f` r

*Main> foldr const 0 [1..]
1
*Main> putStrLn $ snd $ runWriter $ myfoldrW const 0 [1..]
Interrupted.

One of the good things from foldr is the possibility of
"short-circuiting", so to speak. However I don't know if it is
possible to show this using the writer monad, as is would involve
observing if the function is strict or not in its second argument.

Cheers,

-- 
Felipe.