[Haskell-cafe] [Alternative] some/many narrative

[Brent Yorgey]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 09:34:14AM -0800, Bryan O'Sullivan wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 10:29 PM, Chris Wong <
> chrisyco+haskell-cafe at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> >    -- [Warning]: This is only defined for actions that eventually fail
> >    -- after being performed repeatedly, such as parsing. For pure values
> > such
> >    -- as 'Maybe', this will cause an infinite loop.
> >
> 
> If an action of type Maybe a is written to always and unconditionally
> return Just some-value-or-other, *that's* when some or many will

The way you phrased this sounds odd to me.  Every action/value of type
Maybe a will *either* "always and unconditionally" be Nothing, OR
always and unconditionally be Just some-value-or-other.  By
referential transparency, those are the only options.

-Brent