Id 

Using Hoogle we can look up Haskell typeclasses. For example, let’s look at Control.Monad.Identity:

The Identity monad is a monad that does not embody any computational strategy. It simply applies the bound function to its input without any modification. Computationally, there is no reason to use the Identity monad instead of the much simpler act of simply applying functions to their arguments. The purpose of the Identity monad is its fundamental role in the theory of monad transformers. Any monad transformer applied to the Identity monad yields a non-transformer version of that monad.

Here’s the corresponding type in Scalaz:

  /** The strict identity type constructor. Can be thought of as `Tuple1`, but with no
   *  runtime representation.
   */
  type Id[+X] = X

We need to look at monad transformer later, but one thing that’s interesting is that all data types can be Id of the type.

scala> (0: Id[Int])
res39: scalaz.Scalaz.Id[Int] = 0

Scalaz introduces several useful methods via Id:

trait IdOps[A] extends Ops[A] {
  /**Returns `self` if it is non-null, otherwise returns `d`. */
  final def ??(d: => A)(implicit ev: Null <:< A): A =
    if (self == null) d else self
  /**Applies `self` to the provided function */
  final def |>[B](f: A => B): B = f(self)
  final def squared: (A, A) = (self, self)
  def left[B]: (A \/ B) = \/.left(self)
  def right[B]: (B \/ A) = \/.right(self)
  final def wrapNel: NonEmptyList[A] = NonEmptyList(self)
  /** @return the result of pf(value) if defined, otherwise the the Zero element of type B. */
  def matchOrZero[B: Monoid](pf: PartialFunction[A, B]): B = ...
  /** Repeatedly apply `f`, seeded with `self`, checking after each iteration whether the predicate `p` holds. */
  final def doWhile(f: A => A, p: A => Boolean): A = ...
  /** Repeatedly apply `f`, seeded with `self`, checking before each iteration whether the predicate `p` holds. */
  final def whileDo(f: A => A, p: A => Boolean): A = ...
  /** If the provided partial function is defined for `self` run this,
   * otherwise lift `self` into `F` with the provided [[scalaz.Pointed]]. */
  def visit[F[_] : Pointed](p: PartialFunction[A, F[A]]): F[A] = ...
}

|> lets you write the function application at the end of an expression:

scala> 1 + 2 + 3 |> {_.point[List]}
res45: List[Int] = List(6)

scala> 1 + 2 + 3 |> {_ * 6}
res46: Int = 36

visit is also kind of interesting:

scala> 1 visit { case x@(2|3) => List(x * 2) }
res55: List[Int] = List(1)

scala> 2 visit { case x@(2|3) => List(x * 2) }
res56: List[Int] = List(4)