Documentation

The Eq class defines equality (==) and inequality (/=). All the basic datatypes exported by the Prelude are instances of Eq, and Eq may be derived for any datatype whose constituents are also instances of Eq.

Minimal complete definition: either == or /=.

The Ord class is used for totally ordered datatypes.

Instances of Ord can be derived for any user-defined datatype whose constituent types are in Ord. The declared order of the constructors in the data declaration determines the ordering in derived Ord instances. The Ordering datatype allows a single comparison to determine the precise ordering of two objects.

Minimal complete definition: either compare or <=. Using compare can be more efficient for complex types.

Class Enum defines operations on sequentially ordered types.

The enumFrom... methods are used in Haskell's translation of arithmetic sequences.

Instances of Enum may be derived for any enumeration type (types whose constructors have no fields). The nullary constructors are assumed to be numbered left-to-right by fromEnum from 0 through n-1. See Chapter 10 of the Haskell Report for more details.

For any type that is an instance of class Bounded as well as Enum, the following should hold:

• The calls succ maxBound and pred minBound should result in a runtime error.
• fromEnum and toEnum should give a runtime error if the result value is not representable in the result type. For example, toEnum 7 :: Bool is an error.
• enumFrom and enumFromThen should be defined with an implicit bound, thus:

   enumFrom     x   = enumFromTo     x maxBound
   enumFromThen x y = enumFromThenTo x y bound
     where
       bound | fromEnum y >= fromEnum x = maxBound
             | otherwise                = minBound

The Bounded class is used to name the upper and lower limits of a type. Ord is not a superclass of Bounded since types that are not totally ordered may also have upper and lower bounds.

The Bounded class may be derived for any enumeration type; minBound is the first constructor listed in the data declaration and maxBound is the last. Bounded may also be derived for single-constructor datatypes whose constituent types are in Bounded.

The Monad class defines the basic operations over a monad, a concept from a branch of mathematics known as category theory. From the perspective of a Haskell programmer, however, it is best to think of a monad as an abstract datatype of actions. Haskell's do expressions provide a convenient syntax for writing monadic expressions.

Minimal complete definition: >>= and return.

Instances of Monad should satisfy the following laws:

return a >>= k  ==  k a
m >>= return  ==  m
m >>= (\x -> k x >>= h)  ==  (m >>= k) >>= h

Instances of both Monad and Functor should additionally satisfy the law:

fmap f xs  ==  xs >>= return . f

The instances of Monad for lists, Maybe and IO defined in the Prelude satisfy these laws.

The Functor class is used for types that can be mapped over. Instances of Functor should satisfy the following laws:

fmap id  ==  id
fmap (f . g)  ==  fmap f . fmap g

The instances of Functor for lists, Maybe and IO satisfy these laws.

mapM f is equivalent to sequence . map f.

mapM_ f is equivalent to sequence_ . map f.

Evaluate each action in the sequence from left to right, and collect the results.

Evaluate each action in the sequence from left to right, and ignore the results.

Same as >>=, but with the arguments interchanged.