[Haskell-cafe] instance Monad (Except err)

[Tillmann Rendel]

Hi,

Martijn van Steenbergen wrote:
> Mr. McBride and mr. Paterson define in their Applicative paper:
> 
>> data Except e a = OK a | Failed e
>> instance Monoid e => Applicative (Except e) where ...
> 
> Sometimes I'd still like to use >>= on Excepts but this "feels" wrong 
> somehow, because it doesn't use monoids nicely like the Applicative 
> instance does. Are there any good reasons such a Monad instance 
> shouldn't be defined? Does it violate any laws, for example?

The problem is that one would like to define

   Failed e1 >> Failed e2 = Failed (e1 `mappend` e2)

but then

   p >> q

is no longer the same as

   p >>= const q

which could be confusing.

   Tillmann