Nottingham FP Lab Blog

Decisive Functors

by Conor on July 8, 2007.
Tagged as: Lunches.

It’s another name-choosing exercise that I’m vacillating about, but here’s today’s terminology for the dual to Applicative functors. Remember we had the lax monoidal presentation

> class Functor f => Applicative f where > unit :: () -> f () > mult :: (f s, f t) -> f (s, t)

> class Functor f => Applicative f where > unit :: () -> f () > mult :: (f s, f t) -> f (s, t)

Well, switch from products to coproducts and flip round those arrows and you’ve got

> class Functor f => Decisive f where > nogood :: f Zero -> Zero > orwell :: f (Either s t) -> Either (f s) (f t)

> class Functor f => Decisive f where > nogood :: f Zero -> Zero > orwell :: f (Either s t) -> Either (f s) (f t)

A Decisive f gives us some sort of certainty with respect to its parameter. If you think of f as some sort of epistemic modality, then it’s quite a useful one. Firstly, if we know/believe/imagine Zero, that must mean the world really is no good, and there really is an element of Zero. Even better, if we know/believe/imagine S or T, that must mean we actually know/believe/imagine S or know/believe/imagine T. ‘Or’ behaves well, and always gives us a decision.

I wonder what we expect to hold. Well, naturally,

> either (fmap g) (fmap h) . orwell = orwell . fmap (either g h)

> either (fmap g) (fmap h) . orwell = orwell . fmap (either g h)

but surely we’d also like

> orwell . fmap Left = Left > orwell . fmap Right = Right
> either id orwell . orwell . fmap eassoc > = eassoc . either orwell id . orwell

where

> eassoc :: Either (Either a b) c -> Either a (Either b c) > either :: (a -> c) -> (b -> c) -> Either a b -> c

> eassoc :: Either (Either a b) c -> Either a (Either b c) > either :: (a -> c) -> (b -> c) -> Either a b -> c

but we’d also hope for

> either (magic . nogood) id . orwell = fmap (either magic id) > either id (magic . nogood) . orwell = fmap (either id magic)

> either (magic . nogood) id . orwell = fmap (either magic id) > either id (magic . nogood) . orwell = fmap (either id magic)

I wonder what else.

There’s an ‘idiomatic’ interface to these things.

> class Functor f => Decisive f where > refute :: f Zero -> a > branch :: (f s -> a) -> (f t -> a) -> f (Either s t) -> a

> class Functor f => Decisive f where > refute :: f Zero -> a > branch :: (f s -> a) -> (f t -> a) -> f (Either s t) -> a

Now, guess what. Every comonad is decisive. As it were,

> instance Comonad c => Decisive c where > nogood = counit > orwell story = case counit story of > Left s -> fmap (either id (const s)) story > Right t -> fmap (either (const t) id) story

> instance Comonad c => Decisive c where > nogood = counit > orwell story = case counit story of > Left s -> fmap (either id (const s)) story > Right t -> fmap (either (const t) id) story

That is, orwell revises the story so that, throughout, it’s consistently on whichever side we happen to be on at the (counit) moment.


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