What are monads in Haskell and how do they work?

What are monads in Haskell and how do they work?

Monads in Haskell are a design pattern used to handle side effects and manage computations. They allow for chaining operations while maintaining a functional programming style.

Can you give me an example of a simple monad?

Sure! The Maybe monad is a common example. It represents a computation that might fail. For instance, it can either be Just a value or Nothing.

How do I use the Maybe monad in my code?

You can use the Maybe monad with the 'do' notation to chain operations. For example:

safeDivide :: Int -> Int -> Maybe Int
safeDivide _ 0 = Nothing
safeDivide x y = Just (x `div` y)

result = do
    a <- safeDivide 10 2
    b <- safeDivide a 0
    return b

What are some other types of monads in Haskell?

Other common monads include the List monad, which represents non-deterministic computations, and the IO monad, which handles input/output operations.