[Haskell-cafe] What are "free" Monads?

[Daniel Peebles]

Given any functor you can get a monad for free!

data Free f a = Either a (f (Free f a))

Not sure about unfree, but there are cofree comonads that are pretty closely
related, and give you a comonad given a functor:

data Cofree f a = (a, f (Cofree f a))

I'm sure the more categorically minded can tell you way more.

Hope this helps,
Dan

2010/2/27 Günther Schmidt <gue.schmidt at web.de>

> Hello,
>
> I see the term "free monad" quite a lot, but don't really see an
> explanation what a free monad is. What sets a monad free and why in this day
> and age are there unfree monads?
>
> Günther
>
>
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