Documentation for the "operational" package

1 Introduction

This package is based on "The Operational Monad Tutorial" and this documentation describes its extension to a production-quality library. In other words, the "magic" gap between relevant paper and library implementation is documented here.

Take note that this this library is only ~50 lines of code, yet the documentation even includes a proof! :-)

Sources and inspiration for this library include Chuan-kai Lin's unimo paper, John Hughes 95, and Ryan Ingram's MonadPrompt package.

2 Using this Library

To understand what's going on, you'll have to read "The Operational Monad Tutorial". Here, I will first and foremost note the changes with respect to the tutorial.

Several advanced example monads demonstrate how to put this library to good use. In the source distribution, the corresponding source files can also be found in the .docs/examples folder.

2.1 Changes to the Program type

For efficiency reasons, the type Program representing a list of instructions is now abstract. A function view is used to inspect the first instruction, it returns a type

data ProgramView instr a where
    Return :: a -> ProgramView instr a
    (:>>=) :: instr a -> (a -> Program instr b) -> ProgramView instr b

which is much like the old Program type, except that Then was renamed to :>>= and that the subsequent instructions stored in the second argument of :>>= are stored in the type Program, not ProgramView.

To see an example of the new style, here the interpreter for the stack machine from the tutorial:

interpret :: StackProgram a -> (Stack Int -> a)
interpret = eval . view
    where
    eval :: ProgramView StackInstruction a -> (Stack Int -> a)
    eval (Push a :>>= is) stack     = interpret (is ()) (a:stack)
    eval (Pop    :>>= is) (a:stack) = interpret (is a ) stack
    eval (Return a)       stack     = a

So-called "view functions" like view are a common way of inspecting data structures that have been made abstract for reasons of efficiency; see for example viewL and viewR in Data.Sequence.

2.2 Efficiency

Compared to the original type from the tutorial, Program now supports >>= in O(1) time in most use cases. This means that left-biased nesting like

let
    nestLeft :: Int -> StackProgram Int
    nestLeft 0 = return 0
    nestLeft n = nestLeft (n-1) >>= push
in
    interpret (nestLeft n) []

will now take O(n) time. In contrast, the old Program type from the tutorial would have taken O(n^2) time, similar to ++ for lists taking quadratic time in when nested to the left.

However, this does not hold in a persistent setting. In particular, the example

let
    p  = nestLeft n
    v1 = view p
    v2 = view p
    v3 = view p
in
    v1 `seq` v2 `seq` v3

will take O(n) time for each call of view instead of O(n) the first time and O(1) for the other calls. But since monads are usually used ephemerally, this is much less a restriction than it would be for lists and ++.

2.3 Monad Transformers

Furthermore, Program is actually a type synonym and expressed in terms of a monad transformer ProgramT

type Program instr a = ProgramT instr Identity a

Likewise, view is a specialization of viewT to the identity monad. This change is transparent (except for error messages on type errors) for users who are happy with just Program but very convenient for those users who want to use it as a monad transformer.

The key point about the transformer version ProgramT is that in addition to the monad laws, it automatically satisfies the lifting laws for monad transformers as well

lift . return        =  return
lift m >>= lift . g  =  lift (m >>= g)

The corresponding view function viewT now returns the type m (ViewT instr m a). It's not immediately apparent why this return type will do, but it's straightforward to work with, like in the following implementation of the list monad transformer:

data PlusI m a where
    Zero :: PlusI m a
    Plus :: ListT m a -> ListT m a -> PlusI m a

type ListT m a = ProgramT (PlusI m) m a

runList :: Monad m => ListT m a -> m [a]
runList = eval <=< viewT
    where
    eval :: Monad m => ProgramViewT (PlusI m) m a -> m [a]
    eval (Return x)        = return [x]
    eval (Zero     :>>= k) = return []
    eval (Plus m n :>>= k) =
        liftM2 (++) (runList (m >>= k)) (runList (n >>= k))

2.4 Alternatives to Monad Transformers

By the way, note that monad transformers are not the only way to build larger monads from smaller ones; a similar effect can be achieved with the direct sum of instructions sets. For instance, the monad

Program (StateI s :+: ExceptionI e) a

data (f :+: g) a = Inl (f a) | Inr (g a)  -- a fancy  Either

is a combination of the state monad

type State a = Program (StateI s) a

data StateI s a where
    Put :: s -> StateI s ()
    Get :: StateI s s

and the error monad

type Error e a = Program (ErrorI e) a

data ErrorI e a where
    Throw :: e -> ErrorI e ()
    Catch :: ErrorI e a -> (e -> ErrorI e a) -> ErrorI e a

The "sum of signatures" approach and the (:+:) type constructor are advocated in Wouter Swierstra's "Data Types a la carte". Time will tell which has more merit; for now I have opted for a seamless interaction with monad transformers.

3 Design and Implementation

3.1 Proof of the monad laws (Sketch)

The key point of this library is of course that the view and viewT functions respect the monad laws. While this seems obvious from the definition, the proof is actually not straightforward.

First, we restrict ourselves to view, i.e. the version without monad transformers. In fact, I don't have a full proof for the version with monad transformers, more about that in the next section.

Second, we use a sloppy, but much more suitable notation, namely we write

>>=instead of Bind
returninstead of Lift for the identity monad
i,j,k,...for primitive instructions

Then, the view function becomes

view (return a)        = Return a
view (return a  >>= g) = g a                           -- left unit
view ((m >>= f) >>= g) = view (m >>= (\x -> f x >>= g) -- associativity
view (i         >>= g) = i :>>= g
view  i                = i :>>= return                 -- right unit

Clearly, view uses the monad laws to rewrite it's argument. But we want to show that whenever two expressions

e1,e2 :: Program instr a

can be transformed into each other by rewriting them with the monad laws in any fashion (remember that >>= and return are constructors), then view will map them to the same result. More formally, we have an equivalence relation

e1 ~ e2   iff   e1 and e2 are the same modulo monad laws

and want to show

e1 ~ e2  =>   view e1 = view e2    (some notion of equality)

Now, this needs proof because view is like a term rewriting system and there is no guarantee that two equivalent terms will be rewritten to the same normal form.

Trying to attack this problem with term rewriting and critical pairs is probably hopeless and not very enlightening. After all, the theorem should be obvious because two equivalent expressions should have the same first instruction i. Well, we can formalize this with the help of a normal form

data NF instr a where
    Return' :: a -> NF instr a
    (:>>=') :: instr a -> (a -> NF instr b) -> NF instr b

This is the old program type and the key observation is that NF instr is already a monad.

instance Monad (NF inst) where
    (Return' a) >>= g = g a
    (m :>>=' f) >>= g = m :>>= (\x -> f x >>= g)

(I'll skip the short calculation and coinduction argument that this really fulfills the monad laws.) We can define a normalization function

normalize :: Program instr a -> NF instr a
normalize (m >>= g)  = normalize m >>=' normalize g
normalize (return a) = Return' a
normalize  i         = i :>>=' Return'

which has the now obvious property that

e1 ~ e2  =>  normalize e1 = normalize e2

Now, the return type of view is akin to a head normal form, hence

   normalize (view e1) = normalize (view e2) 
=> view e1 = view e2

(for some suitable extension of normalize to the ProgramView type.) But since view only uses monad laws to rewrite its argument, we also have

e1 ~ view e1  =>  normalize e1 = normalize (view e1)

and this concludes the proof, which pretty much only showed that two equivalent expressions have the same instruction list and hence view gives equal results.

3.2 Monad Transformers

The monad transformer case is more hairy, I have no proof here. (If you read this by accident: don't worry, it's still correct. This is for proof nerds only.)

The main difficulty is that the equation

return = lift . return

is an equation for the already existing return constructor and the notion of "first instruction" no longer applies. Namely, we have

m  =  return m >>= id  =  lift (return m) >>= id

and it's not longer clear what a suitable normal form might be. It appears that viewT rewrites the term as follows

  lift m >>= g
= lift m >>= (\x -> lift (return (g x)) >>= id)
= (lift m >>= lift . return . g) >>= id
= lift (m >>= return . g) >>= id

(To be continued.)

4 Other Design Choices

4.1 Recursive type definitions with Program

In the unimo paper, the instructions carry an additional parameter that "unties" recursive type definition. For example, the instructions for MonadPlus are written

data PlusI unimo a where
    Zero :: PlusI unimo a
    Plus :: unimo a -> unimo a -> PlusI unimo a

The type constructor variable unimo will be tied to Unimo PlusI.

In this library, I have opted for the conceptually simpler approach that requires the user to tie the recursion himself

data PlusI a where
    Zero :: PlusI a
    Plus :: Program PlusI a -> Program PlusI a -> Plus I a

I am not sure whether this has major consequences for composeablity; at the moment I believe that the former style can always be recovered from an implementation in the latter style.