Arrows that are also Functors

[Edward Kmett]

On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Henning Thielemann <
lemming at henning-thielemann.de> wrote:

>
> Is it common to make a type an instance of both Arrow and Functor type
> class? If a type is both instance of Arrow and Functor, would you expect
> that fmap = (^<<) ? If yes, how about adding this as expected law to the
> Control.Arrow documentation?


For any instance of Functor that is also an Arrow this must hold already
given existing laws.

One (particularly obvious) arrow law is that

arr id = id

This law states the fact that arr is the Functor from the category of
Haskell types to your arrow category.

Given that:

id ^<< g = arr id <<< g = g . arr id = g . id = g = id g

we can see (^<<) id = id is satisfied. The "second Functor law" comes for
free given (^<<) id = id, and the free theorem for (^<<), so (^<<) is
admissable as a definition for fmap.

Finally, valid Functor instances for a given type are unique.

This also follows from the free theorem for fmap and the side condition that
fmap id = id and has been worked through here on the cafe before. I believe
it was done most recently by Russell O'Connor.

So fmap = (^<<) must hold for any type that is both a valid instance of
Arrow and Functor.

The free theorem for fmap does all your work for you and no new laws need to
be placed on the books.

-Edward


> Same question for Applicative functors and liftA2 (,) = (&&&). (Btw.
> Control.Arrow haddock documentation does not mention any Arrow law so far.)
>
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