Where with lambda in haskell

Question

I am reading the 2nd edition of the (great) book from Graham Hutton "Progamming in Haskell" (Cambridge Press).

Reading the State Monad section, I stumbled on a small task that I gave myself.

How could you rewrite the following using where instead of let?

type State = Int
newtype ST a = S (State -> (a, State))

instance Functor ST where
    -- fmap :: (a -> b) -> ST a  -> ST b
    fmap g st = S (\state -> let (x, s') = app st state in (g x, s'))

I tried variations around this code but it doesn't work:

instance Functor ST where
   -- fmap :: (a -> b) -> ST a  -> ST b
   fmap g st = S (\state -> (g x, newstate))
              where (x, newstate) = app st state

I know it's not useful per se, but I would like to know if and how it is possible.

melpomene · Accepted Answer · 2019-03-02 14:46:01Z

11

let BINDINGS in EXPRESSION is an expression and can be used anywhere an expression is allowed.

where only attaches to declarations, not expressions. \state -> ... is not a declaration, so you can't attach where to it. You can't attach it to an outer declaration either because then state won't be in scope.

Possible solution:

instance Functor ST where
    fmap g st = S f
        where
        f state = (g x, s')
            where (x, s') = app st state

Instead of an anonymous function \state -> ... we have a local declaration f state = ..., to which we can attach a where clause that has access to state.

answered Mar 2, 2019 at 14:46

melpomene

86.2k8 gold badges96 silver badges155 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Where with lambda in haskell

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related