Imperative OOP Ceremony: do-Notation Pt. 2

An Example: IO Actions

In the last tutorial we learned about Haskell's do-notation of Method Cascades that use a Programmable Fluent Interface, a.k.a. Monads in FP lingo.

As we can guess, since we defined the main function as a do-notation, print returns a monadic object. As we can observe, the evaluation of this monadic object yields an output to the console.

main = do {
  print("Hello World!");
}

The type of the monadic object is IO, as it models IO actions like printing something to the screen.

As long as we're not binding another method to print("Hello World!") as in this simple example, we can skip the do-notation.

main = print("Hello World!")

It is important to understand that "Hello World!" as a String and the IO object print("Hello World") (whose evaluation has the side-effect of "Hello World!" appearing on the screen) are two very different things. In order to make this difference more apparent it would be great to be able to access the inner value of the IO object, but IO objects are very shy; they have private constructors and accessors. But since they are monadic, we can bind another print to print("Hello World!") and print the inner value of print("Hello World!"). Instead of our own bind method (i.e. print("Hello World!").bind(\(a) -> print(a))) we shall use directly Haskell's bind operator >>=.

main = print("Hello World!") >>= \(a) -> print(a)

As we can see, the actual inner value of the IO object print("Hello World!") isn't "Hello World!", but "void", i.e. the empty tuple () (FP lingo: Unit). (The empty tuple () represents an output to something stateful like the real world.)

Let's bind print to an IO object that contains something more substantial. getLine provides us with an IO object that contains the String of an input from the command line. (Don't forget to press Enter.)

main = getLine >>= \(a) -> print(a)

As we can see, getLine contains the String we have entered on the command line.

Using IO's exported return factory function we can create our own IO objects and bind print to them. This is admittedly a very convoluted way of using the print function.

main = return("Hello World!") >>= \(a) -> print(a)

Return

As we can see in the previous example, return doesn't terminate the monadic expression, as it may make sense to bind another function to the monadic object that return constructs. (Remember that return is factory method.)

main = do {
  a <- return("Hello World");
  print(a);
}

>>=

Using the bind operator >>= may result in even terser code, especially when writing in pointfree style, e.g. when binding print without wrapping it up in \(a) -> print(a).

main = getLine >>= print

Cf. do-notation, where we must provide a bound variable.

main = do {
  a <- getLine;
  print(a);
}

>>

We may use a wildcard instead of a if we opt for not using it anyway.

main = do {
  _ <- getLine;
  print("tldr;");
}

In this case, do-notation allows for ommiting _ <- alltogether.

main = do {
  getLine;
  print("tldr;");
}

In order not to write >>= \(_) -> in normal Haskell syntax, the Monad interface provides an auxilary operator >>.

main = getLine >> print("tldr;")

{;}

Last but not least, do-notation doesn't require curly braces and trailing semicolons are unnecessary, too.

main = do
  print("What's your name?")
  name <- getLine
  print("Hello " ++ name ++ "!")

Side note: In a more idiomatic Haskell style, we would also remove the parenthesis after print. As a substitute, we use $, the apply operator.

main = do
  print "What's your name?"
  name <- getLine
  print $ "Hello " ++ name ++ "!"

Sections

An Example: IO Actions

Return

>>=

>>

{;}