[Haskell-cafe] Linguistic hair-splitting

[Daniel Fischer]

Am Donnerstag 28 Januar 2010 09:14:38 schrieb Ketil Malde:
> Daniel Fischer <daniel.is.fischer at web.de> writes:
> >> It has been known to call such things 'computations',
>
> I think "actions" has been used, too, but perhaps mostly for things in
> IO and similar monads?
>
> >> as opposed to 'values', and even to separate the categories of types
> >> and expressions which deliver the two.
> >
> > As usual, that only works part of the time. [1,4,15,3,7] is not a
> > computation, it's a list of numbers. A plain and simple everyday
> > value.
>
> But isn't a value of (IO String) equally plain and simple?

Sure, but saying a value of type IO String is "a computation (in the IO 
monad) returning a String" makes more sense to me than saying 
[True,False,True] is "a computation (in the [] monad) returning a Bool".

>
> I think I prefer (as somebody suggested) "monadic value",

Yes, that works for all monads.

> so that (if
> you want to stress this aspect of its use) the list is a monadic Int
> value in the [] monad, while getLine is a monadic String value in the IO
> monad, and so on.  Maybe.
>
> -k