Proposal: add 'state' to the MonadState class

[Antoine Latter]

On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 9:25 AM, Twan van Laarhoven <twanvl at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello list,
>
>
> Currently the 'state' function is only defined for the State type (aka
> StateT Identity):
>
>    state :: (s -> (a, s)) -> State s a
>    state f = StateT (Identity . f)
>
> But this function makes sense for all MonadState instances. I therefore
> propose to either add it to the MonadState class:
>
>    class MonadState s m | m -> s where
>        ...
>        state :: (s -> (a,s)) -> m a
>        state f = do s <- get
>                     let (a,s') = f s
>                     set s'
>                     return a
>
> or as a stand alone function like modify. I personally prefer to add it to
> the class, since that allows for a more efficient implementation. In
> particular:
>
>    instance Monad m => MonadState s (StateT s m) where
>        ....
>        state = StateT (return . f)
>
>

I think that "mtl" has a real maintainer now - unless something
changed from the thread back in June I think Edward K. is doing the
duty, so I don't know that the libraries process strictly applies.

But that doesn't mean we can't have a discussion in public!

Would we make the corresponding change to the "monads-tf" package?

I think it is worth keeping their public API in sync to the extent
practical, but I don't know if the maintainers of the two packages
have a policy on that.

Antoine