The FunctorM library

[Simon Marlow]

On 21 March 2005 10:24, Thomas Hallgren wrote:

> Superclasses are never really needed, are they? But they are useful
> because they make types smaller and more readable.

Well, superclasses might be required by default methods.

> For a given type T which has a Monad instance, you can always declare
> 
>     instance Functor T where fmap = liftM
> 
> so it is not a big burden to have to declare a Functor instance to
> accompany a Monad instance.

I don't really have a strong view about this, I'm happy to defer to those who know more about it.  But I have a slight preference for not having to define Functor instance if I don't need one - lots of little monads in my code would be affected.  Also, Monad dictionaries would get slightly larger.
 
> And the Haskell libraries already contain superclass relationships
> that make less sense than the Functor=>Monad relationship.

This is true.  Here's some good background reading that Google turned up:

  http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~rjmh/Haskell/Messages/Display.cgi?id=444

I think this was part of the original Haskell 98 discussion.

Cheers,
	Simon