Re: [Haskell-cafe] Monoid wants a (++) equivalent

Except that in this case the operator is associative :P On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 2:42 PM, David Leimbach wrote:

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 10:04 AM, Bryan O'Sullivan wrote:

...

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 9:50 AM, David Leimbach wrote:

...

I actually worry that this will make people think, more incorrectly, that Monoids are about appending stuff only.

I think that adding a graphical operator as a synonym for mappend would actually help to address that, since the magic word "append" would no longer be nearly as common in source code, and that textual name certainly is (unhelpfully) suggestive of a specific semantics.

Yeah the textual name doesn't help one bit.  Much like "return" confuses folks in Monads.  However, I think most people learn Haskell in stages where ++ is introduced as an append operation *before* they even come across the term "Monoid".  I feel that though this may have a lesser degenerative impact on the newbie's ability to learn Monoids, that it still contributes to the confusion a bit. Then again, anyone who's had to deal with overloaded operators in any language should learn never to assume anything about overloaded operators...

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