Haskell monadic IO - haskell

compute fp = do
text <- readFile fp
let (a,b) = sth text
let x = data b
--g <- x
putStr $ print_matrix $ fst $ head $ x
It works when i get only first element but i want do this for all element on the list of pair.
When i write g<- x i got Couldn't match expected type `IO t0'
with actual type [([[Integer]], [[Integer]])]

You're inside the IO Monad here, so any time you write a "bind" arrow <-, the thing on the right side has to be an IO operation. So the short answer is, you don't want to use <- on the value x.
Now, it looks like you want to call print_matrix for each element of a list rather than a single element. In that case I think Macke is on the right track, but I would use mapM_ instead:
mapM_ (putStr . print_matrix . fst) x
should do the trick.
The reason is that you are explicitly saying you want to putStr each element, one at a time, but you don't care about the result of putStr itself.

It sounds like mapM might fit your bill: Monad a => (b -> a c) -> [b] -> a [c]
It's used to apply a monadic function to a list, and get a list back, in the monad

Related

Lazy evaluation of IO actions

I'm trying to write code in source -> transform -> sink style, for example:
let (|>) = flip ($)
repeat 1 |> take 5 |> sum |> print
But would like to do that using IO. I have this impression that my source can be an infinite list of IO actions, and each one gets evaluated once it is needed downstream. Something like this:
-- prints the number of lines entered before "quit" is entered
[getLine..] >>= takeWhile (/= "quit") >>= length >>= print
I think this is possible with the streaming libraries, but can it be done along the lines of what I'm proposing?
Using the repeatM, takeWhile and length_ functions from the streaming library:
import Streaming
import qualified Streaming.Prelude as S
count :: IO ()
count = do r <- S.length_ . S.takeWhile (/= "quit") . S.repeatM $ getLine
print r
This seems to be in that spirit:
let (|>) = flip ($)
let (.>) = flip (.)
getContents >>= lines .> takeWhile (/= "quit") .> length .> print
The issue here is that Monad is not the right abstraction for this, and attempting to do something like this results in a situation where referential transparency is broken.
Firstly, we can do a lazy IO read like so:
module Main where
import System.IO.Unsafe (unsafePerformIO)
import Control.Monad(forM_)
lazyIOSequence :: [IO a] -> IO [a]
lazyIOSequence = pure . go where
go :: [IO a] -> [a]
go (l:ls) = (unsafePerformIO l):(go ls)
main :: IO ()
main = do
l <- lazyIOSequence (repeat getLine)
forM_ l putStrLn
This when run will perform cat. It will read lines and output them. Everything works fine.
But consider changing the main function to this:
main :: IO ()
main = do
l <- lazyIOSequence (map (putStrLn . show) [1..])
putStrLn "Hello World"
This outputs Hello World only, as we didn't need to evaluate any of l. But now consider replacing the last line like the following:
main :: IO ()
main = do
x <- lazyIOSequence (map (putStrLn . show) [1..])
seq (head x) putStrLn "Hello World"
Same program, but the output is now:
1
Hello World
This is bad, we've changed the results of a program just by evaluating a value. This is not supposed to happen in Haskell, when you evaluate something it should just evaluate it, not change the outside world.
So if you restrict your IO actions to something like reading from a file nothing else is reading from, then you might be able to sensibly lazily evaluate things, because when you read from it in relation to all the other IO actions your program is taking doesn't matter. But you don't want to allow this for IO in general, because skipping actions or performing them in a different order can matter (and above, certainly does). Even in the reading a file lazily case, if something else in your program writes to the file, then whether you evaluate that list before or after the write action will affect the output of your program, which again, breaks referential transparency (because evaluation order shouldn't matter).
So for a restricted subset of IO actions, you can sensibly define Functor, Applicative and Monad on a stream type to work in a lazy way, but doing so in the IO Monad in general is a minefield and often just plain incorrect. Instead you want a specialised streaming type, and indeed Conduit defines Functor, Applicative and Monad on a lot of it's types so you can still use all your favourite functions.

Is it possible in Haskell to apply the function putStrLn to every element of a list of Strings, have it print to the screen, while being non recursive

I am trying to make a function that takes a list of strings and executes the command putStrLn or print (I think they are basically equivalent, please correct me if I am wrong as I'm still new to Haskell) to every element and have it printed out on my terminal screen. I was experimenting with the map function and also with lambda/anonymous functions as I already know how to do this recursively but wanted to try a more complex non recursive version. map returned a list of the type IO() which was not what I was going for and my attempts at lambda functions did not go according to plan. The basic code was:
test :: [String] -> something
test x = map (\a->putStrLn a) x -- output for this function would have to be [IO()]
Not entirely sure what the output of the function was supposed to be either which also gave me issues.
I was thinking of making a temp :: String variable and have each String appended to temp and then putStrLn temp but was not sure how to do that entirely. I though using where would be viable but I still ran into issues. I know how to do this in languages like java and C but I am still quite new to Haskell. Any help would be appreciated.
There is a special version of map that works with monadic functions, it's called mapM:
test :: [String] -> IO [()]
test x = mapM putStrLn x
Note that this way the return type of test is a list of units - that's because each call to putStrLn returns a unit, so result of applying it to each element in a list would be a list of units. If you'd rather not deal with this silliness and have the return type be a plain unit, use the special version mapM_:
test :: [String] -> IO ()
test x = mapM_ putStrLn x
I was thinking of making a temp :: String variable and have each String appended to temp and then putStrLn temp
Good idea. A pattern of "render the message" then a separate "emit the message" is often nice to have long term.
test xs = let temp = unlines (map show xs)
in putStrLn temp
Or just
test xs = putStrLn (unlines (show <$> xs))
Or
test = putStrLn . unlines . map show
Not entirely sure what the output of the function was supposed to be either which also gave me issues.
Well you made a list of IO actions:
test :: [String] -> [IO ()]
test x = map (\a->putStrLn a) x
So with this list of IO actions when do you want to execute them? Now? Just once? The first one many times the rest never? In what order?
Presumably you want to execute them all now. Let's also eta reduce (\a -> putStrLn a) to just putStrLn since that means the same thing:
test :: [String] -> IO ()
test x = sequence_ (map (\a->putStrLn a) x)

Print map function's output list using mapM_ / putStrLn

I tried to print map function's list output using putStrLn as,
main = do
let out = "hello\nworld\nbye\nworld\n"
putStrLn $ map ("out: " ++) $ lines out
It throws error as,
Couldn't match type ‘[Char]’ with ‘Char’
I referred some other code and changed the lastline to
mapM_ putStrLn $ map ("out: " ++) $ lines out
It solves the problem, but how does map monad with underscore suffix work in this case?
mapM_ is based on the mapM function, which has the type
mapM :: Monad m => (a -> m b) -> [a] -> m [b]
And mapM_ has the type
mapM_ :: Monad m => (a -> m b) -> [a] -> m ()
With the former, it acts like the normal map over a list, but where each element has an action run with the results aggregated. So for example if you wanted to read multiple files you could use contents <- mapM readFile [filename1, filename2, filename3], and contents would be a list where each element represented the contents of the corresponding file. The mapM_ function does the same thing, but throws away the results. One definition is
mapM_ f list = do
mapM f list
return ()
Every action gets executed, but nothing is returned. This is useful in situations like yours where the result value is useless, namely that () is the only value of type () and therefore no actual decisions can be made from it. If you had mapM putStrLn someListOfStrings then the result of this would have type IO [()], but with mapM_ putStrLn someListOfStrings the [()] is thrown away and just replaced with ().

`mfix` not working as expected

I expected the following code to first prompt start:, then wait for a user response, before echoing the previous user response back, and awaiting a new one:
import System.IO (hFlush, stdout)
import Control.Monad.Fix (mfix)
f :: [String] -> IO [String]
f = mapM $ \x -> putStr x >> putStr ": " >> hFlush stdout >> getLine
g x = f ("start":x)
main = mfix g
But it gives the error thread blocked indefinitely in an MVar operation after the first line is entered.
Why is this and how can I fix it (excuse the pun)?
The reason why this can't work is that in mfix f runs any effect in f exactly once. This follows from the tightening rule
mfix (\x -> a >>= \y -> f x y) = a >>= \y -> mfix (\x -> f x y)
in particular
mfix (\x -> a >> f x) = a >> mfix f
for any correct instance of MonadFix. So the fixed point is only computed for the pure (lazily computed) value inside the monadic action, not for the effects. In your case using mfix asks for printing/reading characters just once in such a way that the input is equal to the output, which is impossible. This isn't a proper use case for mfix. You'd use mfix with IO for example to construct a cyclic data structure in IO like in these examples.
In your case you should use iterateM_ or something similar rather than mfix. see also iterate + forever = iterateM? Repeating an action with feedback.
Unfortunately, mfix in the IO monad doesn't really work to produce lists piecemeal like that. This is because most actions in the IO monad are very strict: they don't produce any part of their result until the whole action has been performed. In particular, mapM in IO will not return any part of its result list until it has gone through all of its input list, which leaves mfix with no hope of tying the knot in the right way here.
In general, mfix in IO really only works if the tied-back value isn't looked at strictly until after the whole mfix action is completed. This still has some possible uses, like initializing a data structure with cycles of mutable cells using only newIORef.

Haskell: save one listitem at a time to file

I'd like to save a huge list A to a textfile. writeFile seems to only save the list at the very end of the calcultaion of A, which crashes because my memory is insufficient to store the whole list.
I have tried this using
writeFile "test.txt" $ show mylistA
Now I have tried saving the elements of the list, as they are calculated using:
[appendFile "test2.txt" (show x)|x<-mylistA]
But it doesn't work because:
No instance for (Show (IO ())) arising from a use of `print' Possible fix: add an instance declaration for (Show (IO ())) In a stmt of an interactive GHCi command: print it
Can you help me fix this, or give me a solution which saves my huge list A to a text file?
Thank you
The problem is that your list has the type [ IO () ] or "A list of IO actions". Since the IO is on the "inside" of out type we can't execute this in the IO monad. What we want instead is IO (). So a list comprehension isn't going to hack it here.
We could use a function to turn [IO ()] -> IO [()] but this case lends itself to a much more concise combinator.
Instead we can use a simple predefined combinator called mapM_. In the Haskell prelude the M means it's monadic and the _ means that it returns m () in our case IO (). Using it is trivial in this case
[appendFile "test2.txt" (show x)|x<-mylistA]
becomes
mapM_ (\x -> appendFile "test2.txt" (show x)) myListA
mapM_ (appendFile "test2.txt" . show) myListA
This will unfold to something like
appendFile "test2.txt" (show firstItem) >>
appendFile "test2.txt" (show secondItem) >>
...
So we don't ever have the whole list in memory.
You can use the function sequence from Control.Monad to take a (lazily generated) list of IO actions and execute them one at a time
>>> import Control.Monad
Now you can do
>>> let myList = [1, 2, 3]
>>> sequence [print x | x <- myList]
1
2
3
[(),(),()]
Note that you get a list of all the return values at the end. If you want to discard the return value, just use sequence_ instead of sequence.
>>> sequence_ [print x | x <- myList]
1
2
3
I just wanted to expand on jozefg's answer by mentioning forM_, the flipped version of mapM_. Using forM_ you get something that looks like a foreach loop:
-- Read this as "for each `x` in `myListA`, do X"
forM_ myListA $ \x -> do
appendFile "test2.txt" (show x)

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