+++ /dev/null
-Many of you offered a solution along the following lines:
-
- type 'a state = int -> 'a * int;;
- let unit (a : 'a) : 'a state =
- fun count -> (a, count);;
- let bind (u : 'a state) (f : 'a -> 'b state ) : 'b state =
- fun count -> let (a, count') = u count in f a count';;
-
- (* Looks good so far, now how are we going to increment the count? *)
-
- let lift2 (f : 'a -> 'b -> 'c) (u : 'a state) (v : 'b state) : 'c state =
- bind u (fun x ->
- bind v (fun y ->
- fun count -> (f x y, count + 1)));;
-
-Whoops. That will work for the cases you're probably thinking about. For instance, you can do:
-
- lift2 (+) (unit 1) (lift2 (+) (unit 2) (unit 3));;
-
-and you'll get back an `int state` that when applied to a starting count of `0` yields the result `(6, 2)`---that is, the result of the computation was 6 and the number of operations was 2.
-
-However, there are several problems here. First off, you shouldn't name your function `lift2`, because we're using that name for a function that's interdefinable with `bind` in a specific way. Our canonical `lift2` function is:
-
- let lift2 (f : 'a -> 'b -> 'c) (u : 'a state) (v : 'b state) : 'c state =
- bind u (fun x ->
- bind v (fun y ->
- unit (f x y)));;
-
-(Haskell calls this `liftM2`, and calls our `lift` either `liftM` or `mapM`.)
-
-OK, so then you might call your function `loft2` instead. So what?
-
-The remaining problem is more subtle. It's that your solution isn't very modular. You've crafted a tool `loft2` that fuses the operation of incrementing the count with the behavior of our `lift2`. What if we needed to deal with some unary functions as well? Then you'd need a `loft1`. What if we need to deal with some functions that are already monadic? Then you'd need a tool that fuses the count-incrementing with the behavior of `bind`. And so on.
-
-It's nicer to just create a little module that does the count-incrementing, and then use that together with the pre-existing apparatus of `bind` and (our canonical) `lift` and `lift2`. You could do that like this:
-
- let tick (a : 'a) : 'a state =
- fun count -> (a, count + 1);;
-
- let result1 =
- bind
- (lift2 (+)
- (unit 1)
- (bind
- (lift2 (+)
- (unit 2)
- (unit 3))
- tick))
- tick;;
-
- result1 0;; (* evaluates to (6, 2) *)
-
-Or like this:
-
- let tock : unit state =
- fun count -> ((), count + 1);;
-
- let result2 =
- bind
- tock
- (fun _ -> lift2 (+)
- (unit 1)
- (bind
- tock
- (fun _ -> lift2 (+)
- (unit 2)
- (unit 3))));;
-
- result2 0;; (* evaluates to (6, 2) *)
-