list monad transformer

Iavor S. Diatchki diatchki@cse.ogi.edu
Thu, 15 May 2003 23:00:19 -0700


hello,

in my earlier post i made a silly mistake -- i said that
#ErrorT# preserves commutativity, which is definately wrong
throwError 1 >> throwError 2 /= throwError 2 >> throwError 1
(what was i thinking :-)


Andrew J Bromage wrote:
> G'day all.
> 
> On Thu, May 15, 2003 at 11:12:32AM -0700, Iavor Diatchki wrote:
> 
> 
>>given that, we should either remove the 
>>#ListT# transformer from the monad library, or (perhaps better) put a 
>>big warning that it should only be used with commutative monads.
> 
> 
> My personal choice would be to dump it and replace it with Ralf
> Hinze's backtracking monad transformer, which _does_ preserve
> commutativity.  If someone with checkin rights is listening in,
> I'd be very happy to contribute my implementation, which is about
> as stable as it's ever going to be.
that's an interesting idea, i'd forgotten about that one.
by the way it is not that the list monad transformer does not
preserve commutativity, it simply does not produce a monad when 
transforming a non-commutative monad.

bye
iavor