Towards Monads: Safe division

[This section used to be near the end of the lecture notes for week 6]

We begin by reasoning about what should happen when someone tries to divide by zero. This will lead us to a general programming technique called a monad, which we'll see in many guises in the weeks to come.

Integer division presupposes that its second argument (the divisor) is not zero, upon pain of presupposition failure. Here's what my OCaml interpreter says:

# 12/0;;
Exception: Division_by_zero.

So we want to explicitly allow for the possibility that division will return something other than a number. We'll use OCaml's option type, which works like this:

# type 'a option = None | Some of 'a;;
# None;;
- : 'a option = None
# Some 3;;
- : int option = Some 3

So if a division is normal, we return some number, but if the divisor is zero, we return None. As a mnemonic aid, we'll append a ' to the end of our new divide function.

let div' (x:int) (y:int) =
  match y with
      0 -> None
    | _ -> Some (x / y);;

(*
val div' : int -> int -> int option = fun
# div' 12 2;;
- : int option = Some 6
# div' 12 0;;
- : int option = None
# div' (div' 12 2) 3;;
Characters 4-14:
  div' (div' 12 2) 3;;
        ^^^^^^^^^^
Error: This expression has type int option
       but an expression was expected of type int
*)

This starts off well: dividing 12 by 2, no problem; dividing 12 by 0, just the behavior we were hoping for. But we want to be able to use the output of the safe-division function as input for further division operations. So we have to jack up the types of the inputs:

let div' (u:int option) (v:int option) =
  match u with
      None -> None
    | Some x -> (match v with
                  Some 0 -> None
                | Some y -> Some (x / y));;

(*
val div' : int option -> int option -> int option = 
# div' (Some 12) (Some 2);;
- : int option = Some 6
# div' (Some 12) (Some 0);;
- : int option = None
# div' (div' (Some 12) (Some 0)) (Some 3);;
- : int option = None
*)

Beautiful, just what we need: now we can try to divide by anything we want, without fear that we're going to trigger any system errors.

I prefer to line up the match alternatives by using OCaml's built-in tuple type:

let div' (u:int option) (v:int option) =
  match (u, v) with
      (None, _) -> None
    | (_, None) -> None
    | (_, Some 0) -> None
    | (Some x, Some y) -> Some (x / y);;

So far so good. But what if we want to combine division with other arithmetic operations? We need to make those other operations aware of the possibility that one of their arguments has triggered a presupposition failure:

let add' (u:int option) (v:int option) =
  match (u, v) with
      (None, _) -> None
    | (_, None) -> None
    | (Some x, Some y) -> Some (x + y);;

(*
val add' : int option -> int option -> int option = 
# add' (Some 12) (Some 4);;
- : int option = Some 16
# add' (div' (Some 12) (Some 0)) (Some 4);;
- : int option = None
*)

This works, but is somewhat disappointing: the add' operation doesn't trigger any presupposition of its own, so it is a shame that it needs to be adjusted because someone else might make trouble.

But we can automate the adjustment. The standard way in OCaml, Haskell, etc., is to define a bind operator (the name bind is not well chosen to resonate with linguists, but what can you do). To continue our mnemonic association, we'll put a ' after the name "bind" as well.

let bind' (u: int option) (f: int -> (int option)) =
  match u with
      None -> None
    | Some x -> f x;;

let add' (u: int option) (v: int option)  =
  bind' u (fun x -> bind' v (fun y -> Some (x + y)));;

let div' (u: int option) (v: int option) =
  bind' u (fun x -> bind' v (fun y -> if (0 = y) then None else Some (x / y)));;

(*
#  div' (div' (Some 12) (Some 2)) (Some 3);;
- : int option = Some 2
#  div' (div' (Some 12) (Some 0)) (Some 3);;
- : int option = None
# add' (div' (Some 12) (Some 0)) (Some 3);;
- : int option = None
*)

Compare the new definitions of add' and div' closely: the definition for add' shows what it looks like to equip an ordinary operation to survive in dangerous presupposition-filled world. Note that the new definition of add' does not need to test whether its arguments are None objects or real numbers---those details are hidden inside of the bind' function.

The definition of div' shows exactly what extra needs to be said in order to trigger the no-division-by-zero presupposition.

[Linguitics note: Dividing by zero is supposed to feel like a kind of presupposition failure. If we wanted to adapt this approach to building a simple account of presupposition projection, we would have to do several things. First, we would have to make use of the polymorphism of the option type. In the arithmetic example, we only made use of int options, but when we're composing natural language expression meanings, we'll need to use types like N option, Det option, VP option, and so on. But that works automatically, because we can use any type for the 'a in 'a option. Ultimately, we'd want to have a theory of accommodation, and a theory of the situations in which material within the sentence can satisfy presuppositions for other material that otherwise would trigger a presupposition violation; but, not surprisingly, these refinements will require some more sophisticated techniques than the super-simple Option monad.]

Monads in General

We've just seen a way to separate thinking about error conditions (such as trying to divide by zero) from thinking about normal arithmetic computations. We did this by making use of the option type: in each place where we had something of type int, we put instead something of type int option, which is a sum type consisting either of one choice with an int payload, or else a None choice which we interpret as signaling that something has gone wrong.

The goal was to make normal computing as convenient as possible: when we're adding or multiplying, we don't have to worry about generating any new errors, so we would rather not think about the difference between ints and int options. We tried to accomplish this by defining a bind operator, which enabled us to peel away the option husk to get at the delicious integer inside. There was also a homework problem which made this even more convenient by defining a lift operator that mapped any binary operation on plain integers into a lifted operation that understands how to deal with int options in a sensible way.

So what exactly is a monad? We can consider a monad to be a system that provides at least the following three elements:

• A complex type that's built around some more basic type. Usually the complex type will be polymorphic, and so can apply to different basic types. In our division example, the polymorphism of the 'a option type provides a way of building an option out of any other type of object. People often use a container metaphor: if u has type int option, then u is a box that (may) contain an integer.

  type 'a option = None | Some of 'a;;
  

• A way to turn an ordinary value into a monadic value. In OCaml, we did this for any integer x by mapping it to the option Some x. In the general case, this operation is known as unit or return. Both of those names are terrible. This operation is only very loosely connected to the unit type we were discussing earlier (whose value is written ()). It's also only very loosely connected to the "return" keyword in many other programming languages like C. But these are the names that the literature uses. [The rationale for "unit" comes from the monad laws (see below), where the unit function serves as an identity, just like the unit number (i.e., 1) serves as the identity object for multiplication. The rationale for "return" comes from a misguided desire to resonate with C programmers and other imperative types.]

  The unit/return operation is a way of lifting an ordinary object into the monadic box you've defined, in the simplest way possible. You can think of the singleton function as an example: it takes an ordinary object and returns a set containing that object. In the example we've been considering:

  let unit x = Some x;;
  val unit : 'a -> 'a option = <fun>
  

  So unit is a way to put something inside of a monadic box. It's crucial to the usefulness of monads that there will be monadic boxes that aren't the result of that operation. In the Option/Maybe monad, for instance, there's also the empty box None. In another (whimsical) example, you might have, in addition to boxes merely containing integers, special boxes that contain integers and also sing a song when they're opened.

  The unit/return operation will always be the simplest, conceptually most straightforward way to lift an ordinary value into a monadic value of the monadic type in question.

• Thirdly, an operation that's often called bind. As we said before, this is another unfortunate name: this operation is only very loosely connected to what linguists usually mean by "binding." In our Option/Maybe monad, the bind operation is:

  let bind u f = match u with None -> None | Some x -> f x;;
  val bind : 'a option -> ('a -> 'b option) -> 'b option = <fun>
  

  Note the type: bind takes two arguments: first, a monadic box (in this case, an 'a option); and second, a function from ordinary objects to monadic boxes. bind then returns a monadic value: in this case, a 'b option (you can start with, e.g., int options and end with bool options).

  Intuitively, the interpretation of what bind does is this: the first argument is a monadic value u, which evaluates to a box that (maybe) contains some ordinary value, call it x. Then the second argument uses x to compute a new monadic value. Conceptually, then, we have

  let bind u f = (let x = unbox u in f x);;
  

  The guts of the definition of the bind operation amount to specifying how to unbox the monadic value u. In the bind operator for the Option monad, we unboxed the monadic value by matching it with the pattern Some x---whenever u happened to be a box containing an integer x, this allowed us to get our hands on that x and feed it to f.

  If the monadic box didn't contain any ordinary value, we instead pass through the empty box unaltered.

  In a more complicated case, like our whimsical "singing box" example from before, if the monadic value happened to be a singing box containing an integer x, then the bind operation would probably be defined so as to make sure that the result of f x was also a singing box. If f also wanted to insert a song, you'd have to decide whether both songs would be carried through, or only one of them. (Are you beginning to realize how wierd and wonderful monads can be?)

  There is no single bind function that dictates how this must go. For each new monadic type, this has to be worked out in an useful way.

So the "Option/Maybe monad" consists of the polymorphic option type, the unit/return function, and the bind function.

A note on notation: Haskell uses the infix operator >>= to stand for bind: wherever you see u >>= f, that means bind u f. Wadler uses ⋆, but that hasn't been widely adopted (unfortunately).

Also, if you ever see this notation:

do
    x <- u
    f x

That's a Haskell shorthand for u >>= (\x -> f x), that is, bind u f. Similarly:

do
    x <- u
    y <- v
    f x y

is shorthand for u >>= (\x -> v >>= (\y -> f x y)), that is, bind u (fun x -> bind v (fun y -> f x y)). Those who did last week's homework may recognize this last expression. You can think of the notation like this: take the singing box u and evaluate it (which includes listening to the song). Take the int contained in the singing box (the end result of evaluting u) and bind the variable x to that int. So x <- u means "Sing me up an int, which I'll call x".

(Note that the above "do" notation comes from Haskell. We're mentioning it here because you're likely to see it when reading about monads. (See our page on Translating between OCaml Scheme and Haskell.) It won't work in OCaml. In fact, the <- symbol already means something different in OCaml, having to do with mutable record fields. We'll be discussing mutation someday soon.)

As we proceed, we'll be seeing a variety of other monad systems. For example, another monad is the List monad. Here the monadic type is:

# type 'a list

The unit/return operation is:

# let unit x = [x];;
val unit : 'a -> 'a list = <fun>

That is, the simplest way to lift an 'a into an 'a list is just to make a singleton list of that 'a. Finally, the bind operation is:

# let bind u f = List.concat (List.map f u);;
val bind : 'a list -> ('a -> 'b list) -> 'b list = <fun>

What's going on here? Well, consider List.map f u first. This goes through all the members of the list u. There may be just a single member, if u = unit x for some x. Or on the other hand, there may be no members, or many members. In any case, we go through them in turn and feed them to f. Anything that gets fed to f will be an 'a. f takes those values, and for each one, returns a 'b list. For example, it might return a list of all that value's divisors. Then we'll have a bunch of 'b lists. The surrounding List.concat ( ) converts that bunch of 'b lists into a single 'b list:

# List.concat [[1]; [1;2]; [1;3]; [1;2;4]]
- : int list = [1; 1; 2; 1; 3; 1; 2; 4]

So now we've seen two monads: the Option/Maybe monad, and the List monad. For any monadic system, there has to be a specification of the complex monad type, which will be parameterized on some simpler type 'a, and the unit/return operation, and the bind operation. These will be different for different monadic systems.

Many monadic systems will also define special-purpose operations that only make sense for that system.

Although the unit and bind operation are defined differently for different monadic systems, there are some general rules they always have to follow.

The Monad Laws

Just like good robots, monads must obey three laws designed to prevent them from hurting the people that use them or themselves.

• Left identity: unit is a left identity for the bind operation. That is, for all f:'a -> 'b m, where 'b m is a monadic type, we have (unit x) >>= f == f x. For instance, unit is itself a function of type 'a -> 'a m, so we can use it for f:

  # let unit x = Some x;;
  val unit : 'a -> 'a option = <fun>
  # let ( >>= ) u f = match u with None -> None | Some x -> f x;;
  val ( >>= ) : 'a option -> ('a -> 'b option) -> 'b option = <fun>
  

  The parentheses is the magic for telling OCaml that the function to be defined (in this case, the name of the function is >>=, pronounced "bind") is an infix operator, so we write u >>= f or equivalently ( >>= ) u f instead of >>= u f.

  # unit 2;;
  - : int option = Some 2
  # unit 2 >>= unit;;
  - : int option = Some 2
  

  Now, for a less trivial instance of a function from ints to int options:

  # let divide x y = if 0 = y then None else Some (x/y);;
  val divide : int -> int -> int option = <fun>
  # divide 6 2;;
  - : int option = Some 3
  # unit 2 >>= divide 6;;
  - : int option = Some 3
  
  
  # divide 6 0;;
  - : int option = None
  # unit 0 >>= divide 6;;
  - : int option = None
  

• Associativity: bind obeys a kind of associativity. Like this:

  (u >>= f) >>= g  ==  u >>= (fun x -> f x >>= g)
  

  If you don't understand why the lambda form is necessary (the "fun x -> ..." part), you need to look again at the type of bind.

  Wadler and others try to make this look nicer by phrasing it like this, where U, V, and W are schematic for any expressions with the relevant monadic type:

  (U >>= fun x -> V) >>= fun y -> W  ==  U >>= fun x -> (V >>= fun y -> W)
  

  Some examples of associativity in the Option monad (bear in mind that in the Ocaml implementation of integer division, 2/3 evaluates to zero, throwing away the remainder):

  # Some 3 >>= unit >>= unit;; 
  - : int option = Some 3
  # Some 3 >>= (fun x -> unit x >>= unit);;
  - : int option = Some 3
  
  
  # Some 3 >>= divide 6 >>= divide 2;;
  - : int option = Some 1
  # Some 3 >>= (fun x -> divide 6 x >>= divide 2);;
  - : int option = Some 1
  
  
  # Some 3 >>= divide 2 >>= divide 6;;
  - : int option = None
  # Some 3 >>= (fun x -> divide 2 x >>= divide 6);;
  - : int option = None
  

  Of course, associativity must hold for arbitrary functions of type 'a -> 'b m, where m is the monad type. It's easy to convince yourself that the bind operation for the Option monad obeys associativity by dividing the inputs into cases: if u matches None, both computations will result in None; if u matches Some x, and f x evalutes to None, then both computations will again result in None; and if the value of f x matches Some y, then both computations will evaluate to g y.

• Right identity: unit is a right identity for bind. That is, u >>= unit == u for all monad objects u. For instance,

  # Some 3 >>= unit;;
  - : int option = Some 3
  # None >>= unit;;
  - : 'a option = None
  

More details about monads

If you studied algebra, you'll remember that a monoid is an associative operation with a left and right identity. For instance, the natural numbers along with multiplication form a monoid with 1 serving as the left and right identity. That is, 1 * u == u == u * 1 for all u, and (u * v) * w == u * (v * w) for all u, v, and w. As presented here, a monad is not exactly a monoid, because (unlike the arguments of a monoid operation) the two arguments of the bind are of different types. But it's possible to make the connection between monads and monoids much closer. This is discussed in Monads in Category Theory.

See also:

• Haskell wikibook on Monad Laws.
• Yet Another Haskell Tutorial on Monad Laws
• Haskell wikibook on Understanding Monads
• Haskell wikibook on Advanced Monads
• Haskell wikibook on do-notation
• Yet Another Haskell Tutorial on do-notation

Here are some papers that introduced monads into functional programming:

• Eugenio Moggi, Notions of Computation and Monads: Information and Computation 93 (1) 1991. Would be very difficult reading for members of this seminar. However, the following two papers should be accessible.

• Philip Wadler. The essence of functional programming: invited talk, 19'th Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, ACM Press, Albuquerque, January 1992.

• Philip Wadler. Monads for Functional Programming: in M. Broy, editor, Marktoberdorf Summer School on Program Design Calculi, Springer Verlag, NATO ASI Series F: Computer and systems sciences, Volume 118, August 1992. Also in J. Jeuring and E. Meijer, editors, Advanced Functional Programming, Springer Verlag, LNCS 925, 1995. Some errata fixed August 2001.

There's a long list of monad tutorials on the Offsite Reading page. (Skimming the titles is somewhat amusing.) If you are confused by monads, make use of these resources. Read around until you find a tutorial pitched at a level that's helpful for you.

In the presentation we gave above---which follows the functional programming conventions---we took unit/return and bind as the primitive operations. From these a number of other general monad operations can be derived. It's also possible to take some of the others as primitive. The Monads in Category Theory notes do so, for example.

Here are some of the other general monad operations. You don't have to master these; they're collected here for your reference.

You may sometimes see:

u >> v

That just means:

u >>= fun _ -> v

that is:

bind u (fun _ -> v)

You could also do bind u (fun x -> v); we use the _ for the function argument to be explicit that that argument is never going to be used.

The lift operation we asked you to define for last week's homework is a common operation. The second argument to bind converts 'a values into 'b m values---that is, into instances of the monadic type. What if we instead had a function that merely converts 'a values into 'b values, and we want to use it with our monadic type? Then we "lift" that function into an operation on the monad. For example:

# let even x = (x mod 2 = 0);;
val g : int -> bool = <fun>

even has the type int -> bool. Now what if we want to convert it into an operation on the Option/Maybe monad?

# let lift g = fun u -> bind u (fun x -> Some (g x));;
val lift : ('a -> 'b) -> 'a option -> 'b option = <fun>

lift even will now be a function from int options to bool options. We can also define a lift operation for binary functions:

# let lift2 g = fun u v -> bind u (fun x -> bind v (fun y -> Some (g x y)));;
val lift2 : ('a -> 'b -> 'c) -> 'a option -> 'b option -> 'c option = <fun>

lift2 (+) will now be a function from int options and int options to int options. This should look familiar to those who did the homework.

The lift operation (just lift, not lift2) is sometimes also called the map operation. (In Haskell, they say fmap or <$>.) And indeed when we're working with the List monad, lift f is exactly List.map f!

Wherever we have a well-defined monad, we can define a lift/map operation for that monad. The examples above used Some (g x) and so on; in the general case we'd use unit (g x), using the specific unit operation for the monad we're working with.

In general, any lift/map operation can be relied on to satisfy these laws:

* lift id = id
* lift (compose f g) = compose (lift f) (lift g)

where id is fun x -> x and compose f g is fun x -> f (g x). If you think about the special case of the map operation on lists, this should make sense. List.map id lst should give you back lst again. And you'd expect these two computations to give the same result:

List.map (fun x -> f (g x)) lst
List.map f (List.map g lst)

Another general monad operation is called ap in Haskell---short for "apply." (They also use <*>, but who can remember that?) This works like this:

ap [f] [x; y] = [f x; f y]
ap (Some f) (Some x) = Some (f x)

and so on. Here are the laws that any ap operation can be relied on to satisfy:

ap (unit id) u = u
ap (ap (ap (unit compose) u) v) w = ap u (ap v w)
ap (unit f) (unit x) = unit (f x)
ap u (unit x) = ap (unit (fun f -> f x)) u

Another general monad operation is called join. This is the operation that takes you from an iterated monad to a single monad. Remember when we were explaining the bind operation for the List monad, there was a step where we went from:

[[1]; [1;2]; [1;3]; [1;2;4]]

to:

[1; 1; 2; 1; 3; 1; 2; 4]

That is the join operation.

All of these operations can be defined in terms of bind and unit; or alternatively, some of them can be taken as primitive and bind can be defined in terms of them. Here are various interdefinitions:

lift f u = u >>= compose unit f
lift f u = ap (unit f) u
lift2 f u v = u >>= (fun x -> v >>= (fun y -> unit (f x y)))
lift2 f u v = ap (lift f u) v = ap (ap (unit f) u) v
ap u v = u >>= (fun f -> lift f v)
ap u v = lift2 id u v
join m2 = m2 >>= id
u >>= f = join (lift f u)
u >> v = u >>= (fun _ -> v)
u >> v = lift2 (fun _ -> id) u v

Monad outlook

We're going to be using monads for a number of different things in the weeks to come. One major application will be the State monad, which will enable us to model mutation: variables whose values appear to change as the computation progresses. Later, we will study the Continuation monad.

But first, we'll look at several linguistic applications for monads, based on what's called the Reader monad.

Reader Monad for Variable Binding

Reader Monad for Intensionality