On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 03:56:12PM -0500, Edward Kmett wrote:
1.) Data.Functor.Product admits a useful monad instance.
Yes (once the typos are fixed), and it's compatible with the Applicative instance. While we're at it, we might as well add the MonadPlus and MonadFix instances: instance (MonadPlus f, MonadPlus g) => MonadPlus (Product f g) where mzero = Pair mzero mzero Pair x1 y1 `mplus` Pair x2 y2 = Pair (x1 `mplus` x2) (y1 `mplus` y2) instance (MonadFix f, MonadFix g) => MonadFix (Product f g) where mfix f = Pair (mfix (fstP . f)) (mfix (sndP . f)) where fstP (Pair a _) = a sndP (Pair _ b) = b
2.) The instance for Applicative for MaybeT doesn't really follow the other instances for Applicative in transformers.
David Menendez has explained that this is needed for compatibility with the Monad instance.
3.) Data.Functor.Constant is rather redundant given the existence of the identical Const functor in Control.Applicative (which is a module that Data.Functor.Constant depends upon!) The main thing that would need to be fixed is the addition of Traversable and Foldable to Control.Applicative.Const, which shouldn't be all that controversial. I'll propose that more formally separately, as that does directly fall under the libraries processes.
Yes, that was an oversight, considering I wrote both instances. I think it's better not to abbreviate the name, so I'd suggest moving Constant into Control.Applicative (re-exported by Data.Functor.Constant) and deprecating Const. (Or just hiding Const in Control.Applicative.)
4.) For completeness, I'm including this here, although I sent it in a separate email to Ross the other day. A large number of the monad transformers admit reasonable definitions for Foldable/Traversable.
These all look good, though let's write the ErrorT ones as instance (Foldable f) => Foldable (ErrorT e f) where foldMap f (ErrorT a) = foldMap (either (const mempty) f) a instance (Traversable f) => Traversable (ErrorT e f) where traverse f (ErrorT a) = ErrorT <$> traverse (either (pure . Left) (fmap Right . f)) a so we don't have to wait for the Either instances to appear in base. 5.) While we're talking about transformers, do you have an opinion on #4517: Add Data.Functor.Backwards to transformers (http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/libraries/2010-December/015296.html)? It's just a choice between designs using one functor or two.