Copyright | (c) The University of Glasgow 2001 |
---|---|
License | BSD-style (see the file libraries/base/LICENSE) |
Maintainer | [email protected] |
Stability | experimental |
Portability | non-portable (requires universal quantification for runST) |
Safe Haskell | Trustworthy |
Language | Haskell2010 |
Deprecated: Safe is now the default, please use Control.Monad.ST instead
This library provides support for strict state threads, as described in the PLDI '94 paper by John Launchbury and Simon Peyton Jones Lazy Functional State Threads.
Safe API Only.
The ST
Monad
The strict state-transformer monad.
A computation of type
transforms an internal state indexed
by ST
s as
, and returns a value of type a
.
The s
parameter is either
- an uninstantiated type variable (inside invocations of
runST
), or RealWorld
(inside invocations ofstToIO
).
It serves to keep the internal states of different invocations
of runST
separate from each other and from invocations of
stToIO
.
The >>=
and >>
operations are strict in the state (though not in
values stored in the state). For example,
runST
(writeSTRef _|_ v >>= f) = _|_
runST :: (forall s. ST s a) -> a Source #
Return the value computed by a state transformer computation.
The forall
ensures that the internal state used by the ST
computation is inaccessible to the rest of the program.
fixST :: (a -> ST s a) -> ST s a Source #
Allow the result of a state transformer computation to be used (lazily)
inside the computation.
Note that if f
is strict,
.fixST
f = _|_
Converting ST
to IO
RealWorld
is deeply magical. It is primitive, but it is not
unlifted (hence ptrArg
). We never manipulate values of type
RealWorld
; it's only used in the type system, to parameterise State#
.