[Haskell-cafe] Formalisation for types of monads

[Brent Yorgey]

On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 09:24:06AM +0200, Ertugrul Söylemez wrote:
> Yves Parès <yves.pares at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > >     Note about []:  Don't even mention foldl.  The folding
> > > combinator for lists is foldr, period.
> >
> > Yes, I do agree. I came to this when I realized foldr gave the church
> > encoding of a list.
> 
> Not only that.  The foldr combinator has an identity fold and implements
> actual structural recursion.

That's pretty much what a Church encoding is.  Though I agree it's
probably best not to mention the phrase "Church encoding" to beginning
students.

-Brent