Some useful monadic functions 

Learn You a Haskell for Great Good says:

In this section, we’re going to explore a few functions that either operate on monadic values or return monadic values as their results (or both!). Such functions are usually referred to as monadic functions.

In Scalaz Monad extends Applicative, so there’s no question that all monads are functors. This means we can use map or <*> operator.

join method 

LYAHFGG:

It turns out that any nested monadic value can be flattened and that this is actually a property unique to monads. For this, the join function exists.

In Scalaz join (and its symbolic alias μ) is a method introduced by Bind:

trait BindOps[F[_],A] extends Ops[F[A]] {
  ...
  def join[B](implicit ev: A <~< F[B]): F[B] = F.bind(self)(ev(_))
  def μ[B](implicit ev: A <~< F[B]): F[B] = F.bind(self)(ev(_))
  ...
}

Let’s try it out:

scala> (Some(9.some): Option[Option[Int]]).join
res9: Option[Int] = Some(9)

scala> (Some(none): Option[Option[Int]]).join
res10: Option[Int] = None

scala> List(List(1, 2, 3), List(4, 5, 6)).join
res12: List[Int] = List(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

scala> 9.right[String].right[String].join
res15: scalaz.Unapply[scalaz.Bind,scalaz.\/[String,scalaz.\/[String,Int]]]{type M[X] = scalaz.\/[String,X]; type A = scalaz.\/[String,Int]}#M[Int] = \/-(9)

scala> "boom".left[Int].right[String].join
res16: scalaz.Unapply[scalaz.Bind,scalaz.\/[String,scalaz.\/[String,Int]]]{type M[X] = scalaz.\/[String,X]; type A = scalaz.\/[String,Int]}#M[Int] = -\/(boom)

filterM method 

LYAHFGG:

The filterM function from Control.Monad does just what we want! … The predicate returns a monadic value whose result is a Bool.

In Scalaz filterM is implemented in several places.

trait ListOps[A] extends Ops[List[A]] {
  ...
  final def filterM[M[_] : Monad](p: A => M[Boolean]): M[List[A]] = l.filterM(self)(p)
  ...
}

scala> List(1, 2, 3) filterM { x => List(true, false) }
res19: List[List[Int]] = List(List(1, 2, 3), List(1, 2), List(1, 3), List(1), List(2, 3), List(2), List(3), List())

scala> Vector(1, 2, 3) filterM { x => Vector(true, false) }
res20: scala.collection.immutable.Vector[Vector[Int]] = Vector(Vector(1, 2, 3), Vector(1, 2), Vector(1, 3), Vector(1), Vector(2, 3), Vector(2), Vector(3), Vector())

foldLeftM method 

LYAHFGG:

The monadic counterpart to foldl is foldM.

In Scalaz, this is implemented in Foldable as foldLeftM. There’s also foldRightM too.

scala> def binSmalls(acc: Int, x: Int): Option[Int] = {
         if (x > 9) (none: Option[Int])
         else (acc + x).some
       }
binSmalls: (acc: Int, x: Int)Option[Int]

scala> List(2, 8, 3, 1).foldLeftM(0) {binSmalls}
res25: Option[Int] = Some(14)

scala> List(2, 11, 3, 1).foldLeftM(0) {binSmalls}
res26: Option[Int] = None