suggestion: use lazy pattern matching for Monoid instances of tuples

Henning Thielemann schlepptop at henning-thielemann.de
Sat Aug 17 22:40:50 CEST 2013


Am 17.08.2013 22:31, schrieb Petr Pudlák:
> Dear haskellers,
>
> currently the instances are defined as
>
> |instance  (Monoid  a,Monoid  b) =>Monoid  (a,b)where
>          mempty = (mempty, mempty)
>          (a1,b1) `mappend` (a2,b2) = (a1 `mappend` a2, b1 `mappend` b2)|

I think that this instance is correct, since it must hold

   forall x. mappend mempty x = x

With your instance you get for x=undefined:

   mappend mempty undefined = (undefined, undefined)


However, the "instance Monoid ()" is too lazy, such that it does not 
satisfy the identity law.





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