On Aug 12, 2009, at 21:59 , Michael P Mossey wrote:
I was looking at some code, saw a variable x, and said to myself, "Ah that variable is a monad." Then I realized "Monad" is the name of a type class. So maybe x should be called "an instance of a Monad." I think the word "instance" in this case is OO-like; but in Haskell "instance" refers to a type that is an instance of a type class. Or maybe it can refer to both? And Monad is a type class, not a type. Maybe I need the phrase "monadic type" to refer to an instance of a type class. So maybe x is just "a variable of a monadic type"?
Strictly speaking, yes. In practice the common shorthand is "in the X monad" or just "in X". -- brandon s. allbery [solaris,freebsd,perl,pugs,haskell] allbery@kf8nh.com system administrator [openafs,heimdal,too many hats] allbery@ece.cmu.edu electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon university KF8NH