Re: [Haskell-cafe] Monads and Functions sequence and sequence_
* Mark Spezzano mark.spezz...@chariot.net.au [2010-10-30 15:37:30+1030] Can somebody please explain exactly how the monad functions sequence and sequence_ are meant to work? The others in this thread have already explained how these functions work, so I'll just give an example how they are used. Consider the following task: to read 30 lines from standard input. For one line you would use an action getLine :: IO String How to execute this 30 times? Haskell has a function replicate :: Int - a - [a] which takes a number and produces a list with that number of identical elements. So this is close to what we need: replicate 30 getLine :: [IO String] This is a list containing 30 'getLine' actions. But the list of actions _is not_ an action itself. This is what sequence does -- it transforms a list of actions into a single action which gathers the results into one list. As its name suggests, it does sequencing of actions. sequence $ replicate 30 getLine :: IO [String] Exactly what we need, an action producing a list of lines read. Now, let's consider this code: sequence [ putStrLn $ show i ++ green bottles standing on the wall | i - reverse [1..10] ] :: IO [()] This action prints 10 lines and also returns us gathered results, i.e. 10 '()', one from each putStrLn (recall that putStrLn has type String - IO (). Most probably we don't care about those '()', but they still occupy memory and introduce a space leak as explained here[1]. That's why a version of sequence is introduced which ignores the results of actions and simply returns (). It is called sequence_. sequence_ :: (Monad m) = [m a] - m () As a side note, we can rewrite our last example without using list comprehension in the following way: let p i = putStrLn $ show i ++ green bottles standing on the wall in sequence_ $ map p $ reverse [1..10] The combinations of sequence and sequence_ with map are so common that they have special names: mapM = \f - sequence . map f :: (Monad m) = (a - m b) - [a] - m [b] mapM_ = \f - sequence_ . map f :: (Monad m) = (a - m b) - [a] - m () [1] http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2008/12/mapm-mapm-and-monadic-statements.html -- Roman I. Cheplyaka :: http://ro-che.info/ Don't let school get in the way of your education. - Mark Twain ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
[Haskell-cafe] Monads and Functions sequence and sequence_
Hi, Can somebody please explain exactly how the monad functions sequence and sequence_ are meant to work? I have almost every Haskell textbook, but there's surprisingly little information in them about the two functions. From what I can gather, sequence and sequence_ behave differently depending on the types of the Monads that they are processing. Is this correct? Some concrete examples would be really helpful. Even references to some research papers that explain the rationale behind these (and all the other..?) monad functions would be great. Thanks in advance, Mark Spezzano ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Monads and Functions sequence and sequence_
The expression sequence [a,b,c,...] is roughly equivalent to do r_a - a r_b - b r_c - c ... return [r_a,r_b,r_c,...] The expression sequence_ [a,b,c,...] is roughly equivalent to do a b c ... return () Does that help? Cheers, Greg On 10/29/10 10:07 PM, Mark Spezzano wrote: Hi, Can somebody please explain exactly how the monad functions sequence and sequence_ are meant to work? I have almost every Haskell textbook, but there's surprisingly little information in them about the two functions. From what I can gather, sequence and sequence_ behave differently depending on the types of the Monads that they are processing. Is this correct? Some concrete examples would be really helpful. Even references to some research papers that explain the rationale behind these (and all the other..?) monad functions would be great. Thanks in advance, Mark Spezzano ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
