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GHC 9.10.3 · lts/ghc-9.10.x · 248f8f0 · 2026-10-05

Modulemonads-tf-0.3.0.1GHC2021

Control.Monad.Trans

Classes for monad transformers.

A monad transformer makes new monad out of an existing monad, such that computations of the old monad may be embedded in the new one. To construct a monad with a desired set of features, one typically starts with a base monad, such as Identity, [] or IO, and applies a sequence of monad transformers.

Most monad transformer modules include the special case of applying the transformer to Identity. For example, State s is an abbreviation for StateT s Identity.

Each monad transformer also comes with an operation runXXX to unwrap the transformer, exposing a computation of the inner monad.

  • 2 classes
classclass (forall (m :: Type -> Type). Monad m => Monad (t m)) => MonadTrans (t :: (Type -> Type) -> Type -> Type) where
#

The class of monad transformers. For any monad m, the result t m should also be a monad, and lift should be a monad transformation from m to t m, i.e. it should satisfy the following laws:

Since 0.6.0.0 and for GHC 8.6 and later, the requirement that t m be a Monad is enforced by the implication constraint forall m. Monad m => Monad (t m) enabled by the QuantifiedConstraints extension.

Ambiguity error with GHC 9.0 to 9.2.2

These versions of GHC have a bug (https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/issues/20582) which causes constraints like

(MonadTrans t, forall m. Monad m => Monad (t m)) => ...

to be reported as ambiguous. For transformers 0.6 and later, this can be fixed by removing the second constraint, which is implied by the first.

Methods

  • lift :: Monad m => m a -> t m a

    Lift a computation from the argument monad to the constructed monad.

Instances15MonadTrans, …
classclass Monad m => MonadIO (m :: Type -> Type) where
#

Monads in which IO computations may be embedded. Any monad built by applying a sequence of monad transformers to the IO monad will be an instance of this class.

Instances should satisfy the following laws, which state that liftIO is a transformer of monads:

Methods

  • liftIO :: IO a -> m a

    Lift a computation from the IO monad. This allows us to run IO computations in any monadic stack, so long as it supports these kinds of operations (i.e. IO is the base monad for the stack).

    Example
    import Control.Monad.Trans.State -- from the "transformers" library

printState :: Show s => StateT s IO ()
printState = do
  state <- get
  liftIO $ print state

    Had we omitted liftIO, we would have ended up with this error:

    • Couldn't match type ‘IO’ with ‘StateT s IO’
 Expected type: StateT s IO ()
   Actual type: IO ()

    The important part here is the mismatch between StateT s IO () and IO ().

    Luckily, we know of a function that takes an IO a and returns an (m a): liftIO, enabling us to run the program and see the expected results:

    > evalStateT printState "hello"
"hello"

> evalStateT printState 3
3
Instances16MonadIO, …