A better type signature for `forM_`

31 Mar 2016

      Hi all,

I was recently faced with some unexpected behaviour from a piece of
code that type checks and has zero warnings (even with -Wall). The
code is below (and depends on the hashtables package).

The error was using the <$> operator instead of the =<< operator.
Using the former, it just builds up a list of IO actions that never
get run.

As pointed out to me on IRC (thanks pjdeport), chaning the type 
signature of `forM_` to 

    forM_' :: (Monad m, Foldable t) => t a -> (a -> m ()) -> m ()

would have resulted in an error.

Yes, this change would break existing code (breaking code would require
an explicit `void $` inside the `forM_`) but does anyone else think
this is a good idea?

Erik

import Control.Monad

import qualified Data.HashTable.IO as HT

type EvenCache = HT.BasicHashTable Int Bool

main :: IO ()
main = do
    ht <- buildTable
    xs <- HT.toList ht
    putStrLn $ "cache: length " ++ show (length xs)

buildTable :: IO EvenCache
buildTable = do
    ht <- HT.new
    forM_ pairs $ \ (k,v) ->
        maybe (HT.insert ht k v) (const $ abort k) <$> HT.lookup ht k
    return ht
  where
    xs = [1 .. 10] :: [Int]
    pairs = map (\ i -> (i, even i)) xs
    abort k = error $ "cache: duplicate key " ++ show k ++ "."

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo
http://www.mega-nerd.com/

Erik de Castro Lopo

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