The Other Prelude

Call for contribution

This fun project, called "The Other Prelude", and is a creative reconstruction of the standard Prelude. By disregarding history and compatibility, we get a clean sheet.

Naming conventions

The principal is to make the names very readable for both beginners and category theorists (if any).

Guidelines

• The prelude should not contain any "projection" functions (like fst and snd. They go to the Extension module.

Issues

• Should alphanumeric names be preferred over symbols when defining a class?

The hierarchy

• TheOtherPrelude - Minimalistic module.
• TheOtherPrelude.Extension - Convenient definitions.

The code

Currently, the code is in Wiki form. If people do agree that the collaborative decisions begot something pretty, we'll have a group of files in darcs.haskell.org some time.

The imaginery Prelude as it stands,

import Prelude ()    -- hide everything

-- the idea is to remove 'fmap' 
-- and map :: (a -> b) -> [a] -> [b] to be a special case
-- as well as having (.) :: (a -> b) -> (e -> a) -> (e -> b) as a
-- special case from the Functor instance for ((->) e)
-- Both notations can be provided to allow for clarity in different situations.
class Functor f where
  map :: (a -> b) -> f a -> f b
  (.) :: (a -> b) -> f a -> f b
  map = (.)
  (.) = map

-- should the Functor hierarchy proposal be adopted?
--
-- NO --
class Monad m where
  (>>=) :: m a -> (a -> m b) -> m b
  (>>) :: m a -> m b -> m b
  return :: a -> m a
  fail :: String -> m a
--
-- YES --
-- the following has been shamelessly copied 
-- from the functor hierarchy proposal wiki page
class Functor f => Applicative f where
  return :: a -> f a
  (<*>) :: f (a -> b) -> f a -> f b   -- or should this be named 'ap'? 
                                      -- or something even better?
                                      -- could this nice looking function
                                      -- refactor the liftM* idioms?
  

-- my undestanding is that this is the default for monad
(>>) :: Applicative f => f a -> f b -> f b
  fa >> fb = (map (const id) fa) <*> fb

-- this leaves little left for the actual Monad class
class (Applicative f) => Monad f where
  (>>=) :: f a -> (a -> f b) -> f b
  join :: f (f a) -> f a
  
  x >>= f = join (map f x)
  join x = x >>= id

-- end of Functor hierarchy dilemma

How to use it, as it stands,

import Prelude ()                                    -- hide everything
import TheOtherPrelude                               -- get everything
import qualified TheOtherPrelude.Monad.Kleisli as M  -- standard convention

See also

• Mathematical prelude discussion - A numeric Prelude. Could this be merged into this one?
• Prelude extensions and Prelude function suggestions - Unlike "The Other Prelude" they enhance the Prelude.
• Functor hierarchy proposal - making "Monad m" imply "Functor m"
• If-then-else - making "if" a function
• MissingH - functions "missing" from the haskell Prelude/libraries