[Haskell-cafe] Best practices for Arrows?

[Tom Ellis]

Hi Ertugul.  Thanks for taking the time to write me an in-depth reply!  I
have a few comments and a question.

On Sat, Jun 22, 2013 at 03:36:15PM +0200, Ertugrul Söylemez wrote:
> Tom Ellis <tom-lists-haskell-cafe-2013 at jaguarpaw.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> > Are there any best-practices I should be aware of with Arrows?  Or is
> > it just a case of getting on with it?
> 
> The best practice is probably to avoid them.  If your type is a monad,
> there is little reason to use the awkward arrow interface.

Unfortunately my type doesn't have a Monad instance.

> In most cases when you expose an `Arrow` interface you can also expose a
> `Category`+`Applicative` interface, which is pretty much equivalent
> (except for a few extra laws):
> 
>     proc x -> do
>         y1 <- a1 -< x
>         y2 <- a2 -< x
>         id -< x + y1 + y2^2
> 
> Is equivalent to:
> 
>     liftA3 (\x y1 y2 -> x + y1 + y2^2) id a1 a2

Yes, I can see how that would be useful.  My question is: are you talking
about this Applicative instance:

data MyArr a b = ...

instance Arrow MyArr where
    ...

instance Functor (MyArr a) where
  fmap f = (arr f <<<)

instance Applicative (MyArr a) where
  pure = arr . const
  f <*> g = arr (uncurry ($)) <<< (f &&& g)

> If the interface is not under your control, make yourself comfortable
> with the complete arrow syntax, most notably how it handles operators,
> combinators and the `(| banana bracket notation |)`.  This is very
> valuable information.

Interesting.  I hadn't noticed the `(| banana bracket notation |)` on the
GHC Arrows page[1] before, but just saw it when I went back to check.

> Try to separate individual computations as much as possible and compose
> using `(.)` (or `(<<<)`/`(>>>)` if you prefer).  This makes your code
> much more readable:

Yes, agreed.  I'm a strong proponent of using (.) for functions and (<=<)
when dealing with Monads.

> There is one case where the arrow notation is really indispensable:
> value recursion via `ArrowLoop`:
[...]

I think I will be able to make my Arrow an ArrowLoop, but I haven't
checked.

Thanks again,

Tom

[1] http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/users_guide/arrow-notation.html