[Haskell-cafe] Control.Alternative --- some and many?

[Gregory Crosswhite]

Hey everyone,

Could someone explain to me (or point me to a reference explaining) the 
purpose of the "some" and "many" methods of the Alternative class?

Also, there is a link posted in the documentation for 
Control.Applicative to a paper which describes the motivation behind the 
Applicative class;  is there similarly a paper explaining the motivation 
behind the Alternative class?  (The problem with Googling for 
"Alternative" is that this word is used a whole lot of the time, and 
very rarely does it refer to the Alernative class.  :-) )

Cheers,
Greg