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0.1.3 | Jan 8, 2021 |
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0.1.2 | Jan 6, 2021 |
0.1.1 | Jan 6, 2021 |
0.1.0 | Jan 6, 2021 |
#326 in Data structures
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do-notation
, the monadic do
notation brought to Rust.
This crate provides the m!
macro, which provides the Haskell monadic syntactic sugar do
.
Note: it is not possible to use the
do!
syntax asdo
is a reserved keyword in Rust.
The syntax is very similar to what you find in Haskell:
- You use the
m!
macro; in Haskell, you use thedo
keyword. - The
<-
syntactic sugar binds its left hand side to the monadic right hand side by entering the right side via a closure. - Like almost any statement in Rust, you must end your statement with a semicolon (
;
). - The last line must be absent of
;
or contains thereturn
keyword. - You can use
return
nowhere but on the last line. - A line containing a single expression with a semicolon is a valid statement and has the same effect as
_ <- expr
. let
bindings are allowed in the formlet <pattern> = <expr>;
and have the regular Rust meaning.
How do I make my monad works with m!
?
Because monads are higher-kinded types, it is not possible to define the monadic do-notation in a fully type-system
elegant way. However, this crate is based on the rebindable concept in Haskell (i.e. you can change what the >>=
operator’s types are), so m!
has one type-system requirement and one syntactic requirement.
First, you have to implement one trait: Lift
, which allows to lift a value A
into a monadic structure of
A
. For instance, lifting a A
into the Option
monad yields an Option<A>
.
Then, you have to provide an and_then
method, which is akin to Haskell’s >>=
operator. The choice of using
and_then
and not a proper name like flat_map
or bind
is due to the current state of the standard-library —
monads like Option
and Result<_, E>
don’t have flat_map
defined on them but have and_then
. The type signature
is not enforced, but:
and_then
must be a binary function taking a typeA
, a closureA -> Monad<B>
and returnsMonad<B>
, whereMonad
is the monad you are addingand_then
for. For instance, if you are implementing it forOption
,and_then
takes anA
, a closureA -> Option<B>
and returns anOption<B>
.and_then
must move its first argument, which has to beself
. The type ofSelf
is not enforced.and_then
’s closure must takeA
with aFnOnce
closure.
Meaning of the <-
operator
The <-
syntactic sugar is not strictly speaking an operator: it’s not valid vanilla Rust. Instead, it’s a trick
defined in the m!
allowing to use both Lift::lift
and and_then
. When you look at code inside a do-notation
block, every monadic statements (separated with ;
in this crate) can be imagined as a new level of nesting inside
a closure — the one passed to and_then
, indeed.
First example: fallible code
One of the first monadic application that people learn is the fallible effect — Maybe
in Haskell.
In Rust
, it’s Option
. Option
is an interesting monad as it allows you to fail early.
use do_notation::m;
let r = m! {
x <- Some("Hello, world!");
y <- Some(3);
Some(x.len() * y)
};
assert_eq!(r, Some(39));
The binding <- expr
syntax unwraps the right part and binds it to binding
, making it available to
next calls — remember, nested closures. The final line re-enters the structure (here, Option
) explicitly.
Note that it is possible to re-enter the structure without having to specify how / knowing the structure
(with Option
, you re-enter with Some
). You can use the return
keyword, that will automatically lift the
value into the right structure:
use do_notation::m;
let r = m! {
x <- Some(1);
y <- Some(2);
z <- Some(3);
return [x, y, z];
};
assert_eq!(r, Some([1, 2, 3]));