Re: [Caml-list] Monad Library?

[Wojciech Meyer <wojciech.meyer@googlemail.com>]

On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 11:43 AM, Chris Yocum <cyocum@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was looking into using Monads in my programs but I am slightly at a
> loss as to what library is in general use.  There is pa_monad but that

pa_monad is really useful and nice, I think the updated library is
available as pa_monad_custom OPAM package.

> seems to be a ocamlp4 exention and not a library.  There is
> http://lambda.jimpryor.net/monad_library/ but that doesn't seem to be
> in opam or in godi so I am unsure as to its status.
>
> Does anyone have any suggestion for a well supported monad library for
> Ocaml?

First I would need to find an answer what do you mean by a monad library.

Monads is a general abstraction with a very simple interface. so they
don't require library as such.

However I agree it would be good to have some library that provides a
monadic interface to some common functionality found maybe in std
libraries, also some way of composing monads would be good having
monad transformers along. Batteries included offer monadic interface
to some common data types like list, bool, option.

You could look at Xavier Leroy's lectures here [1] to see the
excellent examples of using monads in OCaml.

For somewhat advanced type system trickery to use generic interface
for monads you can look at this excellent post [2].

-Wojciech

[1] http://gallium.inria.fr/~xleroy/mpri/progfunc/monads.2up.pdf
[2] http://alaska-kamtchatka.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/higher-order-fun.html
[3] http://batteries.forge.ocamlcore.org/