Dmitri O.Kondratiev wrote:
Thanks everybody for your help!
Oliver, you provided an excellent write-up on State monad without
going into 'scary' :) details, great work indeed!
Alas, in this case I need the details, and in particular the most scary
ones!
So let's start with fundamental and most intriguing (to me) things:
getAny :: (Random a) => State StdGen a
getAny = do g <- get -- magically get the current StdGen
First line above declares a data type:
State StdGen a
which is constructed with the function:
State {runState :: (StdGen -> (a, StdGen))}
Q1: Where in the example
(http://www.haskell.org/all_about_monads/examples/example15.hs) data of
this type *actually gets constructed* ?
Actually get constructed?
It gets constructed by >>= and return, both of which construct state
objects:
instance Monad (State s) where
return a = State $ \s -> (a, s)
m >>= k = State $ \s -> let
(a, s') = runState m s
in runState (k a) s'
How do >>= and return get called? Well you can see explicit calls to
return. The >>= is implicit in the way do-notation is desugared.
getAny = do g <- get
let (x,g') = random g
put g'
return x
rewrites to
getAny = get >>= \g -> ( let (x,g') = random g in (put g' >> return x) )
where I have added some not strictly necessary ()s and taken the liberty
of changing the confusing "a <- return x" idiom to "let a = x".
So the *actually gets constructed* part is that use of >>= .
HTH,
Jules
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