[Haskell-cafe] Comments from OCaml Hacker Brian Hurt

[Andrew Coppin]

Duncan Coutts wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-01-15 at 19:46 +0000, Andrew Coppin wrote:
>
>   
>> PS. As a small aside... Is the Monoid class actually used *anywhere* in 
>> all of Haskell?
>>     
>
> Yes.
>
> They're used quite a lot in Cabal. Package databases are monoids.
> Configuration files are monoids. Command line flags and sets of command
> line flags are monoids. Package build information is a monoid.
>   

OK, well then my next question would be "in what say is defining 
configuration files as a monoid superior to, uh, not defining them as a 
monoid?" What does it allow you to do that you couldn't otherwise? I'm 
not seeing any obvious advantage, but you presumably did this for a 
reason...

> It is also used in the Foldable class which is a nice interface for
> traversing/visiting structures. Binary serialisation is also a monoid.
>   

Foldable I'm vaguely familiar with. Its utility is more apparent.