Re: [Haskell-beginners] Applicative for State

Thanks again Francesco. Part of my problem was confusing the data and type constructors. With your solution and my renaming of the data constructors it all became much clearer! :) Mike

On 6 Feb 2017, at 20:15, Francesco Ariis wrote:

On Mon, Feb 06, 2017 at 07:40:12PM +0000, mike h wrote:

...

I have a State by another name, Stat, just to experiment and learn. [...] I really can’t get what the <*> in the Applicative should be! I just do see how I ‘get the f out of the Stat’ and then apply it.

I’d be really grateful if someone would explain what it should be and the steps/reasoning needed to get there.

Hello Mike,

when writing an instance, you always have to keep in mind: (a) the signature of the function you are writing and (b) what the instance is designed to do.

In our case, (<*>) is:

(<*>) :: Applicative f => f (a -> b) -> f a -> f b

-- which we could 'rewrite' as (<*>) :: Stat s (a -> b) -> Stat s a -> Stat s b

so we grab the results, one being a function and the other a value, and apply the first to the second.

(b) is "pass the state around in the background". Good, let's put this in action:

(Stat f) <*> (Stat g) = Stat $ \s -> let (h, s') = f s -- h is a function :: a -> b (a, s'') = g s' -- state passing b = h a in -- the application (b, s'') -- we're not returning just the tuple, we're returning -- even the bit before the 'let' statement

And that is that. Was this clear? _______________________________________________ Beginners mailing list Beginners@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/beginners