Wow. One innocent message...
| Oh no, please don't do this! I use the RefMonad class, but
| *without* the dependency r -> m. Why not? Because I want to
| manipulate (for example) STRefs in monads built on top of the
| ST monad via monad transformers. So I use the same reference
| type with *many different* monads! Your change would make
| this impossible.
I don't think so.
There were really two parts to my message:
1. Have a single built-in type (Ref), rather than two (IORef and
STRef).
I don't see how that can be anything other than a Good Thing, can it?
The primitive operations over Refs are still non-overloaded, as before:
newIORef :: a -> IO (Ref IO a)
newSTRef :: a -> ST s (Ref (ST s) a)
...etc...
2. Have a RefMonad type class to overload the new, read, write
operations over Refs. But nothing in my message precludes also
having a RefMonad2 class with two parameters, and whatever
functional dependencies (or lack of them) that you like
class RefMonad2 r m where
new :: a -> m (r a)
read :: r a -> m a
write :: r a -> a -> m ()
instance RefMonad2 (Ref IO) IO where ...
instance RefMonad2 (Ref (ST s)) (ST s) where ...
So then it's only a question of who gets the name "RefMonad"!
(Incidentally, so far as I know, RefMonad isn't in any of the existing
libraries.)
So I conclude:
(1) is a win
(2) is a question of what we name the new (and undoubtedly
useful) class that I tendentiously called RefMonad
Or am I missing something?
Simon
_______________________________________________
Haskell mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
