On Thu, Oct 02, 2008 at 06:18:19PM +0100, Andrew Coppin wrote:
> run :: State -> Foo -> Either ErrorType (ResultSet State)
>
> run_and :: State -> Foo -> Foo -> Either ErrorType (ResultSet State)
> {- some Either-ified version of
> run_and :: State -> Foo -> Foo -> ResultSet State
> run_and s0 x y = do
> s1 <- run s0 x
> s2 <- run s1 y
> return s2
> -}
I'll assume for simplicity and concreteness that ResultSet = [].
> The 'run_or' function isn't too bad. However, after about an hour of
> trying, I cannot construct any definition for 'run_and' which actually
> typechecks. The type signature for (>>=) requires that the result monad
> matches the source monad, and there is no way for me to implement this.
That's right. The type mismatches are telling you that there's a
situation you haven't thought about, or at least, haven't told us how
you want to handle. Suppose run s0 x = Right [s1a, s1b, s1c] and
run s1a y = Left err, run s1b = Right [s2], run s1c = Left err'. What
should the overall result of run_and s0 x y be? Somehow you have to
choose whether it's a Left or a Right, and which error to report in
the former case.
For the [] monad, there is a natural way to make this choice: it's
encoded in the function sequence :: Monad m => [m a] -> m [a], where
in this setting m = Either ErrorType. For your problem, it would
probably be a good start to write an instance of Traversable for the
ResultSet monad. In general, one way to make the composition of two
monads m and n into a monad is to write a function n (m a) -> m (n a);
this is the sequence method of a Traversable instance for n. Then you
can write join :: m (n (m (n a))) -> m (n a) as
m (n (m (n a))) --- fmap sequence ---> m (m (n (n a)))
------ join ---------> m (n (n a))
------ join ---------> m (n a).
Regards,
Reid Barton
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