[Haskell-cafe] IO () and IO [()]

[Paulo J. Matos]

Hello all,

I find it funny that IO () is different from IO [()].
For example, if I define a function to output some lines with mapT, I would do:
outputLines :: Int -> IO ()
outputLines i = mapM (putStrLn . show) (take i $ iterate ((+) 1) 1)

However, this is in fact
outputLines :: Int -> IO [()]

I would like to know if in fact there's any difference in practice
between (), [()], i.e. if in practice the difference matters.
My first guess is that this is just a consequence of the Haskell type
system and so that everything fits this really needs to be like this.
Because
mapM :: (Monad m) => (a -> m b) -> [a] -> m [b]

So I guess that it makes sense that you get IO [()] instead of IO (),
and adding an exception just to say that [()] == () isn't good.
By the way, as a consequence can you possibly get IO (()) or IO ([()])
and are these all different from each other?

Cheers,

-- 
Paulo Jorge Matos - pocm at soton.ac.uk
http://www.personal.soton.ac.uk/pocm
PhD Student @ ECS
University of Southampton, UK
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