Re: [Haskell-cafe] An interesting monad: "Prompt"

I've been playing with MonadPrompt for about ten days now, trying to get it to do something useful for me. Specifically, I'm trying to implement "guess a number" since that's the hello world of haskell state programs, or so it seems to me. I want to have this with scripting / replay / undo and the other goodies claimed possible http://thomashartman-learning.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/haskell/guessANumber It's been slow going due to still getting to grips with GADTs and other more advanced features of the typing system. If Ryan (or anyone) would care to share any working code for a simple game that uses MonadPrompt, ideally with scripting / replay / undo that would be extremely helpful. Otherwise I'll be back with more specific questions about my attempts to use this stuff soon enough :) (At present, that;'s just trying to get some of the more interesting code you posted as "untested" to compile.) For what it's worth, my game currently saves high some (but not all) state-y information in a serialized form to track high scores. If I can get this working with MonadPrompt, my next quest will be to use MACID to do the serialization instead, and then *all* state will be saved if I understand correctly. t. "Ryan Ingram" Sent by: haskell-cafe-bounces@haskell.org 11/18/2007 07:22 PM To haskell cc Subject [Haskell-cafe] An interesting monad: "Prompt" (This message is a literate haskell file. Code for the "Prompt" monad is preceded by ">"; code for my examples is preceded by "]" and isn't complete, but intended for illustration.) I've been trying to implement a few rules-driven board/card games in Haskell and I always run into the ugly problem of "how do I get user input"? The usual technique is to embed the game in the IO Monad: ] type Game = IO ] -- or ] type Game = StateT GameState IO The problem with this approach is that now arbitrary IO computations are expressible as part of a game action, which makes it much harder to implement things like replay, undo, and especially testing! The goal was to be able to write code like this: ] takeTurn :: Player -> Game () ] takeTurn player = do ] piece <- action (ChoosePiece player) ] attack <- action (ChooseAttack player piece) ] bonusTurn <- executeAttack piece attack ] when bonusTurn $ takeTurn player but be able to script the code for testing, allow undo, automatically be able to save replays, etc. While thinking about this problem earlier this week, I came up with the following solution:

{-# OPTIONS_GHC -fglasgow-exts -fallow-undecidable-instances #-} -- undecidable instances is only needed for the MonadTrans instance below

module Prompt where import Control.Monad.Trans import Control.Monad.Identity

class Monad m => MonadPrompt p m | m -> p where prompt :: p a -> m a

"prompt" is an action that takes a prompt type and gives you a result. A simple example: ] prompt [1,3,5] :: MonadPrompt [] m => m Int This prompt would ask for someone to pick a value from the list and return it. This would be somewhat useful on its own; you could implement a "choose" function that picked randomly from a list of options and gave non-deterministic (or even exhaustive) testing, but on its own this wouldn't be much better than the list monad. What really made this click for me was that the prompt type could be built on a GADT: ] newtype GamePrompt a = GP (GameState, GameChoice a) ] data GameChoice a where ] -- pick a piece to act with ] ChoosePiece :: Player -> GameChoice GamePiece ] -- pick how they should attack ] ChooseAttack :: Player -> GamePiece -> GameChoice AttackType ] -- etc. Now you can use this type information as part of a "handler" function: ] gameIO :: GamePrompt a -> IO a ] gameIO (GP (state, ChoosePiece player)) = getPiece state player ] gameIO (GP (state, ChooseAttack player piece)) = attackMenu player piece ] -- ... The neat thing here is that the GADT specializes the type of "IO a" on the right hand side. So, "getPiece state player" has the type "IO GamePiece", not the general "IO a". So the GADT is serving as a witness of the type of response wanted by the game. Another neat things is that, you don't need to embed this in the IO monad at all; you could instead run a pure computation to do AI, or even use it for unit testing!

-- unit testing example data ScriptElem p where SE :: p a -> a -> ScriptElem p type Script p = [ScriptElem p]

infix 1 --> (-->) = SE

] gameScript :: ScriptElem GameChoice -> GameChoice a -> Maybe a ] gameScript (SE (ChoosePiece _) piece) (ChoosePiece _) = Just piece ] gameScript (SE (ChooseAttack _ _) attack) (ChooseAttack _ _) = Just attack ] gameScript _ _ = Nothing ] ] testGame :: Script GameChoice ] testGame = ] [ ChoosePiece P1 --> Knight ] , ChooseAttack P1 Knight --> Charge ] , ChoosePiece P2 --> FootSoldier ] , ... ] ] So, how to implement all of this?

data Prompt (p :: * -> *) :: (* -> *) where PromptDone :: result -> Prompt p result -- a is the type needed to continue the computation Prompt :: p a -> (a -> Prompt p result) -> Prompt p result

This doesn't require GADT's; it's just using existential types, but I like the aesthetics better this way. Intuitively, a (Prompt p result) either gives you an immediate result (PromptDone), or gives you a prompt which you need to reply to in order to continue the computation. This type is a MonadPrompt:

instance Functor (Prompt p) where fmap f (PromptDone r) = PromptDone (f r) fmap f (Prompt p cont) = Prompt p (fmap f . cont)

instance Monad (Prompt p) where return = PromptDone PromptDone r >>= f = f r Prompt p cont >>= f = Prompt p ((>>= f) . cont)

instance MonadPrompt p (Prompt p) where prompt p = Prompt p return

-- Just for fun, make it work with StateT as well -- (needs -fallow-undecidable-instances) instance (Monad (t m), MonadTrans t, MonadPrompt p m) => MonadPrompt p (t m) where prompt = lift . prompt

The last bit to tie it together is an observation function which allows you to run the game:

runPromptM :: Monad m => (forall a. p a -> m a) -> Prompt p r -> m r runPromptM _ (PromptDone r) = return r runPromptM f (Prompt pa c) = f pa >>= runPromptM f . c

runPrompt :: (forall a. p a -> a) -> Prompt p r -> r runPrompt f p = runIdentity $ runPromptM (Identity . f) p

runScript :: (forall a. ScriptElem p -> p a -> Maybe a) -> Script p -> Prompt p r -> Maybe r runScript _ [] (PromptDone r) = Just r runScript s (x:xs) (Prompt pa c) = case s x pa of Nothing -> Nothing Just a -> runScript s xs (c a) runScript _ _ _ = Nothing -- script & computation out of sync

My original goal is now achievable: ] type Game = StateT GameState (Prompt GamePrompt) ] ] action :: GameChoice a -> Game a ] action p = do ] state <- get ] prompt $ GP (state, p) ] runGameScript :: Script GameChoice -> GameState -> Game a -> Maybe (GameState, a) ] runGameScript script initialState game ] = runScript scriptFn script' (runStateT game initialState) ] where ] script' = map sEmbed script ] scriptFn s (GP (s,p)) = gameScript (sExtract s) p ] sEmbed (SE p a) = SE (GP (undefined, p)) a ] sExtract (SE (GP (_,p)) a) = SE p a Any comments are welcome! Thanks for reading this far. -- ryan _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe --- This e-mail may contain confidential and/or privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient (or have received this e-mail in error) please notify the sender immediately and destroy this e-mail. Any unauthorized copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this e-mail is strictly forbidden.