Hello,

> On 14/08/07, Jeff Polakow <jeff.polakow@db.com> wrote:
> Of course, the type [Int] denotes a value which is a list of Ints;
> additionally [Int] can be viewed as a value representing the
> nondeterministic computation of a single Int. Generally, the type
> Monad m => m Int can be viewed as a value representing the
> computation of an Int.
>
>
> But thats not really right. What exactly m Int does /depends/ on m.
> It might represent 0 or more computations
> of Int, or computations of Int carrying some extra stuff around, or
> complex control logic about what the computation does
> when.
>
Perhaps the confusion is in the word computation. I'm using the word in an abstract sense. I do not mean the actual execution of Haskell code to produce a value. Thus, under this intuition:

The type Int represents a value which denotes an Int. The type m Int denotes a value which is a single computation (for an unspecified notion of computation) of an Int. A specific computation of an Int might result in several, or zero, actual Ints (the list monad); a String or an Int (the Either String monad); the constant () (the trivial monad); ...

The type Monad m => m Int cannot represent multiple computations of an Int. The type Monad m => [m Int] represents multiple computations of an Int (of course, any container type can be used in place of list).

-Jeff

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