Hidden Monads in Scala

Actually, not monads, just functorial stuff. But programmers seems to be unaware of the fact that a monad is a special kind of functor, so...

In Scala, one can define a functor something like this:

  trait Functor[X] { 
    def map[Y](f: X => Y): Functor[Y]
  }

All we need here is map. Lists have map, Options have map... The natural use of a map is to apply it to a function. Like this:

  def loop[X,Y](f: Functor[X], a: X=>Y) = f.map(a)

In Scala, loops can work as maps. And if you are a Haskell programmer, you'll immediately recognize your monadic notation:

  
  def loop[X,Y](f: Functor[X], a: X=>Y) = for (x <- f) yield a(x)

These two are exactly the same.

Praise Scala!

Update: see recent blog entry on monads by Luc Duponchel for a lot more details.