[Haskell-cafe] Re: Monad explanation

[ChrisK]

>> All Haskell programs start as 
> 
>> main :: IO ()
> 
>> though... so they all get evaluated in the context of another IO ()
>> don't they?


True for most cases now, but historically false.  Haskell existed and people 
wrote programs for years before the Monad class and IO were created.  A 
Haskell98 program can be taken to have a "main :: IO ()", but that is not essential.

Which is the point jcc made:

> 
> Well...  Haskell compilers and runhaskell-style interpreters (not
> regular Hugs/ghci!) take the value of Main.main as `the program'.  But
> that feels (to me --- I could be wrong) like an aspect of a particular
> hosted environment.  REPLs can handle programs that aren't wrapped up in
> IO at all; and there's no reason why IO has to be the type of
> IO-performning-things in REPLs, either.  You could just as well write a
> REPL that took, say, tangible values [http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/TV]
> as input instead, and displayed them.  So it's more a matter of Haskell
> implementations can be given an IO value to run than that combining IO
> values together somehow runs them.
> 
> jcc