[Haskell] threading mutable state through callbacks

[Jules Bean]

On 12 Oct 2004, at 18:59, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk wrote:

> Jules Bean <jules at jellybean.co.uk> writes:
>
>> I think what people are trying to suggest is an 'initialization
>> phase' in the IO monad, which takes place "before" the pure
>> functions are defined.
>
> If it was done before, what could you use to specify initial value of
> such a variable? Only literals? Constructors? Named constants? Results
> of arithmetic operations? Results of arbitrary functions?

Yes, that's what I was trying to get at. But you said it much better...

> The well-definedness of a global IORef relies on the fact that
> creation of an IORef doesn't have visible side effects, so it doesn't
> matter when it happens, as long as it happens once between the
> variable is used. An arbitrary IO computation doesn't have this
> property.

Indeed.

There are other hacks you can think of, though, if IORefs are your only 
goal. For example, something like

getIORef :: Int -> a -> IORef a

or

getIORef :: String -> a -> IORef a

(importantly, it's IORef, not IO IORef.)  But this isn't great for 
programmer convenience, since there's nothing to help him discipline 
the use of particular variables.

All we really need is a 'unique value monad' to give us unique values 
to be keys for IORefs (or whatever else), and allow this monad to be 
accessible at the top level. Conceptually this monad is commutative, so 
ordering of the actions doesn't matter.

Jules