Note: this is the stubbed version of module Monads2. You should download the lhs version of this module and replace all parts marked undefined. Eventually, the complete version will be made available.

The State Monad!

Set-up

In this lecture, we'll continue our study of monads via examples of specific monads to try to understand how they work. At this point, don't panic if you don't understand the big picture: each of the specific instances is useful in its own right. For the moment, think of monads as burritos, especially since they really are.

> {-# LANGUAGE InstanceSigs #-}
> module Monads2 where
> import Data.Map (Map)
> import qualified Data.Map as Map
> import Control.Monad (liftM, ap)

This module depends on an auxiliary module that you will define later.

> import State

Note: to load this module into ghci, you must first change into the current subdirectory so that ghci can find it. E.g.,

:cd /Users/sweirich/current/cis552/lectures

Alternatively, the State module is a subset of the functionality in the standard library. We can also replace the import above with:

> -- import Control.Monad.State

The State Monad

Now let us consider the problem of writing functions that manipulate some kind of state. We're going to start with some examples of state manipulation, written in an awkward style, and then show how monads can cleanly abstract the sequencing necessary for such programs.

By way of an example of state manipulation, let's go back to binary trees whose leaves contains values of some type a:

> data Tree a = Leaf a | Branch (Tree a) (Tree a)
>   deriving (Eq, Show)

Here is a simple example:

> tree :: Tree Char
> tree =  Branch (Branch (Leaf 'a') (Leaf 'b')) (Leaf 'c')

A functional programmer would count the number of leaves in a tree like so:

> countF :: Tree a -> Int
> countF (Leaf _) = 1
> countF (Branch t1 t2) = countF t1 + countF t2

On the other hand, consider how a C programmer would count the number of leaves in a tree. She might create a local variable and then then walk the tree, incrementing the variable at each leaf.

In pure code, we cannot modify the values of any variables. However, we can emulate this pattern with a store transformer -- a function that takes an initial state as an input and returns the new state at every step.

In this example, the state, also called the "store", is an Int (representing the current count) and a store transformer is a function of type Int -> Int. See if you can implement an appropriate store transformer.

> -- The number of leaves in the tree that we have currently counted
> type Store = Int

> countI :: Tree a -> Int
> countI t = aux t 0 where
>   aux :: Tree a -> (Store -> Store)
>   aux = undefined

Once you have completed the implementation, test it on the sample tree above.

   ghci> countI tree
   3

In general, a store transformer takes a current store as its argument, and produces a modified store as its result, where the modified store reflects any side effects performed by the function.

Next consider the problem of defining a function that labels each leaf in such a tree with a unique or "fresh" integer. This can be achieved by taking the next fresh integer as an additional argument to a helper function, and returning the next fresh integer as an additional result.

> label1 :: Tree a -> Tree (a, Int)
> label1 t = fst (aux t 0) where
>    aux :: Tree a -> Store -> (Tree(a,Int), Store)
>    aux = undefined

Once you have completed the implementation, again test it on the sample tree above.

    ghci> label1 tree
    Branch (Branch (Leaf ('a',0)) (Leaf ('b',1))) (Leaf ('c',2))

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Here's my version:

> label1' :: Tree a -> Tree (a, Int)
> label1' t = fst (aux t 0) where
>    aux :: Tree a -> Store -> (Tree(a,Int), Store)
>    aux (Leaf x)       s = (Leaf (x,s), s+1)
>    aux (Branch t1 t2) s = let (t1',s')  = aux t1 s
>                               (t2',s'') = aux t2 s'
>                           in (Branch t1' t2', s'')

This example demonstrates that in general, we may wish to return a result value in addition to updating the store. For this reason, we generalize our type of store transformers to also return a result value, with the type of such values being a parameter of the ST type:

> type ST a = Store -> (a, Store)

The store transformer may also wish to take argument values. However, there is no need to further generalize the ST type to take account of this, because this behavior can already be achieved by currying (i.e., treating multi-argument functions as functions returning functions). For example, the store transformer for the tree above takes a tree and returns a labeled tree and has type Tree a -> ST (Tree (a,Int)), which abbreviates the curried function type

Tree a -> Store -> (Tree (a, Int), Store)

The reason we are talking about store transformers is that parameterized type ST is a monad. What are its definitions of return and bind? If you get stuck, try expanding the definitions of ST a in the types below and see where that leads...

> returnST :: a -> ST a
> returnST = undefined

> bindST :: ST a -> (a -> ST b) -> ST b
> bindST = undefined

That is, returnST converts a value into a store transformer that simply returns that value without modifying the state.

In turn, bindST provides a means of sequencing store transformers: bindST st f applies the store transformer st to an initial state s, then applies the function f to the resulting value x to give a second store transformer (f x), which is then applied to the modified store s' to give the final result.

Now see if you can rewrite this slight modification to label1 above. (We have changed the type annotation for aux and moved the s argument to the RHS.) Try to replace the RHS of aux (Branch t1 t2) with applications of bindST and returnST. (Don't try to do the same with the Leaf, we'll need something else for this case.)

> label2 :: Tree a -> Tree (a, Int)
> label2 t = fst (aux t 0) where
>   aux ::  Tree a -> ST (Tree (a,Int))
>   aux (Leaf x)       = \s -> (Leaf (x,s), s+1)
>   aux (Branch t1 t2) = \s -> let (t1', s')  = aux t1 s in
>                              let (t2', s'') = aux t2 s' in
>                              (Branch t1' t2', s'')

We conclude this section with two technicalities.

We would like to just say:

type ST a = Store -> (a, Store)

instance Monad ST where
   -- return :: a -> ST a
   return    = returnST

   -- (>>=)  :: ST a -> (a -> ST b) -> ST b
   st >>= f  = bindST st f

However, in Haskell, types defined using the type mechanism cannot be made into instances of classes. Hence, in order to make ST into an instance of the class of monadic types, in reality it needs to be redefined using the "data" (or newtype) mechanism, which requires introducing a dummy constructor (called S for brevity):

It is convenient to define our own application function for this type, which simply removes the dummy constructor. We do so using a record type declaration, which lets us name the arguments to a data constructor.

> newtype ST2 a = S { apply :: Store -> (a, Store) }

ghci> :type S
S     :: (Store -> (a,Store)) -> ST2 a

ghci> :type apply
apply :: ST2 a -> Store -> (a, Store)

(Records in Haskell are pretty similar to most other languages, but with a few convenient twists. Chapter 3 of RWH gives more details.)

ST2 is now defined as a monadic type (an instance of the Monad class) as follows:

> instance Monad ST2 where
>   return :: a -> ST2 a
>   return x   = S $ \s -> (x,s)

>   (>>=)  :: ST2 a -> (a -> ST2 b) -> ST2 b
>   f >>= g   = S $ \s -> let (a, s')  = apply f s
>                          in apply (g a) s'

(Aside: there is no runtime overhead for manipulating the dummy constructor because we defined ST2 using the newtype mechanism of Haskell, rather than data.)

Starting with GHC 7.10, all monads in Haskell must also be applicative functors. However, we can declare these instances using ap and liftM which are defined in Control.Monad.

> instance Functor ST2 where
>   fmap  = liftM

> instance Applicative ST2 where
>   pure  = return
>   (<*>) = ap

Now, let's rewrite the tree labeling function with the ST2 monad.

In order to generate a fresh integer, we define a special state transformer that simply returns the current state as its result, and the next integer as the new state:

> fresh :: ST2 Int
> fresh = undefined

This function should transform the store as follows: when given an initial store, it should return that store paired with the incremented store.

ghci> apply fresh 1 (1,2)

This function is another useful operation for the ST2 type besides bind and return. (The fact that ST2 is a monad is not the only important property of this type.)

Using this function, together with the return and >>= primitives that are provided by virtue of ST2 being a monadic type, it is now straightforward to define a function that takes a tree as its argument, and returns a store transformer that produces the same tree with each leaf labelled by a fresh integer:

> mlabel            :: Tree a -> ST2 (Tree (a,Int))
> mlable (Leaf x) = undefined
> mlabel (Branch t1 t2) = undefined

Try to write mlabel both with and without do-notation.

Note that in either version, the programmer does not have to worry about the tedious and error-prone task of dealing with the plumbing of fresh labels, as this is handled automatically by the state monad.

Finally, we can now define a function that labels a tree by simply applying the resulting store transformer with zero as the initial state, and then discarding the final state:

> label  :: Tree a -> Tree (a, Int)
> label t = undefined

For example, label tree gives the following result:

ghci> label tree
Branch (Branch (Leaf ('a', 0)) (Leaf ('b',1))) (Leaf ('c', 2))

A Generic Store Transformer

Often, the store that we want to have will have multiple components -- e.g., multiple variables whose values we might want to update. This is easily accomplished by using a different type for Store above, for example, if we want two integers, we might use the definition

type Store = (Int, Int)

and so on.

However, we would like to write reusable code, which will work with any store.

The file State ( lhs version ) contains a generic library for that purpose. You should switch to that file now and read it before moving on. The code below will use those definitions.

Using a Generic Store Transformer

Let us use our generic state monad to rewrite the tree labeling function from above. Note that the actual type definition of the generic transformer is hidden from us, so we must use only the publicly exported functions: get, put and runState (in addition to the monadic functions we get for free.)

First, we write an action that returns the next fresh integer. (Note that the first type argument is the store, while the second is the result type of the monadic action.)

> freshS :: State Int Int
> freshS = undefined

Now, the labeling function with our generic State monad is straightforward.

> mlabelS :: Tree t -> State Int (Tree (t, Int))
> mlabelS (Leaf x)     = do y <- freshS
>                           return (Leaf (x, y))
> mlabelS (Branch t1 t2) = do t1' <- mlabelS t1
>                             t2' <- mlabelS t2
>                             return (Branch t1' t2')

Easy enough!

ghci> runState (mlabelS tree) 0
(Branch (Branch (Leaf ('a',0)) (Leaf ('b',1))) (Leaf ('c',2)),3)

We can execute the action from any initial state of our choice

ghci> runState (mlabelS tree) 1000
(Branch (Branch (Leaf ('a',1000)) (Leaf ('b',1001))) (Leaf ('c',1002)),1003)

Now, what's the point of a generic store transformer if we can't have richer states? Next, let us extend our fresh and label functions so that

each node gets a new label (as before), and
the state also contains a map of the frequency with which each leaf value appears in the tree.

Thus, our state will now have two elements, an integer denoting the next fresh integer, and a Map a Int denoting the number of times each leaf value appears in the tree. (Documentation for the Data.Map module. )

> data MySt a = M { index :: Int
>                 , freq  :: Map a Int }
>               deriving (Eq, Show)

We write an action that returns the current index (and increments it):

> freshM :: State (MySt a) Int
> freshM = undefined

Similarly, we want an action that updates the frequency of a given element k.

> updFreqM :: Ord a => a -> State (MySt a) ()
> updFreqM = undefined

And with these two, we are done

> mlabelM :: Ord a => Tree a -> State (MySt a) (Tree (a, Int))
> mlabelM (Leaf x)     =  do y <- freshM
>                            updFreqM x
>                            return (Leaf (x,y))
> mlabelM (Branch t1 t2) = do t1' <- mlabelM t1
>                             t2' <- mlabelM t2
>                             return (Branch t1' t2')

Now, our initial state will be something like

> initM :: MySt a
> initM = M 0 Map.empty

and so we can label the tree

ghci> let tree2   = Branch tree tree
ghci> let (lt, s) = runState (mlabelM tree2) initM

ghci> lt
Branch (Branch (Branch (Leaf ('a',0)) (Leaf ('b',1))) (Leaf ('c',2))) (Branch (Branch (Leaf ('a',3)) (Leaf ('b',4))) (Leaf ('c',5)))

ghci> s
M {index = 6, freq = fromList [('a',2),('b',2),('c',2)]}

The ST Monad and the IO Monad

See STMonad for a final discussion about the ST monad and comparison with the IO monad.

Credit

The first part of the lecture is a revised version of the lecture notes by Graham Hutton, January 2011

CIS 552: Advanced Programming