do-notation, the monadic do notation brought to Rust.

This crate provides the m! macro, which provides the Haskell monadic syntactic sugar do.

Note: it is not possible to use the do! syntax as do is a reserved keyword in Rust.

The syntax is very similar to what you find in Haskell:

• You use the m! macro; in Haskell, you use the do keyword.
• The <- syntactic sugar binds its left hand side to the monadic right hand side by entering the right side via a closure.
• Like almost any statement in Rust, you must end your statement with a semicolon (;).
• The last line must be absent of ; or contains the return keyword.
• You can use return nowhere but on the last line.
• A line containing a single expression with a semicolon is a valid statement and has the same effect as _ <- expr.
• let bindings are allowed in the form let <pattern> = <expr>; and have the regular Rust meaning.

How do I make my monad works with m!?

Because monads are higher-kinded types, it is not possible to define the monadic do-notation in a fully type-system elegant way. However, this crate is based on the rebindable concept in Haskell (i.e. you can change what the >>= operator’s types are), so m! has one type-system requirement and one syntactic requirement.

First, you have to implement one trait: [Lift], which allows to lift a value A into a monadic structure of A. For instance, lifting a A into the Option monad yields an Option<A>.

Then, you have to provide an and_then method, which is akin to Haskell’s >>= operator. The choice of using and_then and not a proper name like flat_map or bind is due to the current state of the standard-library — monads like Option and Result<_, E> don’t have flat_map defined on them but have and_then. The type signature is not enforced, but:

• and_then must be a binary function taking a type A, a closure A -> Monad<B> and returns Monad<B>, where Monad is the monad you are adding and_then for. For instance, if you are implementing it for Option, and_then takes an A, a closure A -> Option<B> and returns an Option<B>.
• and_then must move its first argument, which has to be self. The type of Self is not enforced.
• and_then’s closure must take A with a FnOnce closure.

Meaning of the <- operator

The <- syntactic sugar is not strictly speaking an operator: it’s not valid vanilla Rust. Instead, it’s a trick defined in the m! allowing to use both [Lift::lift] and and_then. When you look at code inside a do-notation block, every monadic statements (separated with ; in this crate) can be imagined as a new level of nesting inside a closure — the one passed to and_then, indeed.

First example: fallible code

One of the first monadic application that people learn is the fallible effect — Maybe in Haskell. In Rust, it’s Option. Option is an interesting monad as it allows you to fail early.

use do_notation::m;

let r = m! {
  x <- Some("Hello, world!");
  y <- Some(3);
  Some(x.len() * y)
};

assert_eq!(r, Some(39));

The binding <- expr syntax unwraps the right part and binds it to binding, making it available to next calls — remember, nested closures. The final line re-enters the structure (here, Option) explicitly.

Note that it is possible to re-enter the structure without having to specify how / knowing the structure (with Option, you re-enter with Some). You can use the return keyword, that will automatically lift the value into the right structure:

use do_notation::m;

let r = m! {
  x <- Some(1);
  y <- Some(2);
  z <- Some(3);
  return [x, y, z];
};

assert_eq!(r, Some([1, 2, 3]));