[Haskell-cafe] Is it acceptable if Applicative behave not like a Monad

[Andrew Gibiansky]

Why can't the library provide a `newtype`, one which supports `Applicative`
*and* `Monad` interfaces (where the applicative and monadic interfaces
match), and an un-newtyped variant that only supports `Applicaative`, as
well as conversion functions?

I think this would be clearer, as it would force you to switch into
"Monad"-mode purposefully, and the documentation on the conversion function
can make very clear what is going on.

I agree that, now that we have AMP, applicative and monadic interfaces
absolutely *should* match, and that it should be considered an error for
them not to; semantically different interfaces can be provided with
newtypes.

-- Andrew

On Thu, Apr 30, 2015 at 6:46 PM, Omari Norman <omari at smileystation.com>
wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 30, 2015 at 1:32 PM, Nikita Volkov <nikita.y.volkov at mail.ru>
> wrote:
>
>> I'm afraid I have to disagree with Adam as well. Recently I've triggered
>> a prolonged discussion on exactly the subject (
>> https://github.com/ekmett/either/pull/38). Being originally convinced
>> that the instances can behave however it fits, I think I've been
>> over-persuaded in the end.
>>
>> Shortly speaking, while I can't say I like it, the rule seems to be that
>> `<*>` should produce the same side effects as Monad's `ap`.
>>
>>
> One example of a library where the Applicative and Monad instances
> mismatch is uu-parsinglib.
>
>
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18275123/cannot-compute-minimal-length-of-a-parser-uu-parsinglib-in-haskell/18292328#18292328
>
> There's a good reason the library is this way but the behavior can be
> rather startling.
>
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