In a few lines: Monads are a common framework to represent any sequential computation. What is a sequential computation? - either no computation at all. return :: a -> m a does that. - or I have already a computation and want to go on with my computation. But then, I need to be able to look at the result of the first part of the computation to now what to do next: bind :: m a -> (a -> m b) -> m b This tells: If I have a computation returning a value of type a, and when I will know a, I will be able to create a computation returning some b, then I can sequence those and make a computation returning some b. When I want to run it, I will run the first and use the result to construct the second and then run it. *
What is interesting is that you have a representation of sequential computations and can use a common libraries of functions to work with any kind of sequential things. And there are a lot of things that corresponds to this: side-effects, logic programming, parsing... Nicolas. * The monadic notion of sequential computation allows to look at intermediate results to determine what to do next. You obtain other notion of computations like Arrows or Applicative functors if you restrict this right. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
