Deokjae Lee wrote:
Tutorials about monad mention the "monad axioms" or "monad laws". The
tutorial "All About Monads" says that "It is up to the programmer to
ensure that any Monad instance he creates satisfies the monad laws".
The following is one of the laws.
(x >>= f) >>= g == x >>= (\v -> f v >>= g)
However, this seems to me a kind of mathematical identity. If it is
mathematical identity, a programmer need not care about this law to
implement a monad. Can anyone give me an example implementation of
monad that violate this law ?
I will be mean by asking the following counter question:
x + (y + z) = (x + y) + z
is a mathematical identity. If it is a mathematical identity, a
programmer need not care about this law to implement addition + . Can
anyone give me an example implementation of addition that violates this law?
The only difference here is that the associative law for addition is
"obvious" to you, whereas the associative law for monads is not
"obvious" to you (yet). As Neil mentioned, maybe
http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Monad_Laws
can help to convince yourself that the associative law monads should be
obvious, too.
In short, the reason for its obviousness is the interpretation of >>= in
terms of sequencing actions with side effects. The law is probably best
demonstration with its special case
x >> (y >> z) = (x >> y) >> z
In other words, it signifies that it's only the sequence of x,y,z and
not the nesting that matters.
Regards,
apfelmus
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