CODEWITHSUNDEEP
functionhaskellioreturn
Sam Leach
Sam Leach

Reputation: 12966

Why is the return function called return?

Why is the return function called return?

The description is:

Inject a value into the monadic type.

The name not only doesn't make sense (to me), it is confusing for people coming from an imperative language where return is a language keyword that returns from the function.

Upvotes: 12

Views: 837

Answers (3)

DarioBB
DarioBB

Reputation: 663

The answer is because it returns something. It you use in PHP for example - echo something in it, it returns that text or data. But functions primary power is not in echoing data directly. Their power is in storing data and returning variable/array or similar where are data is stored.

You can also return true or false based on data/calculation. In classes, functions are named methods and do the same thing - return something. In java return can be void (echoed data), or strict data type (boolean for example, or String, Array, etc).

After return function data is not being returned.

Upvotes: -3

Iain Ballard
Iain Ballard

Reputation: 4828

It's purely historical. Most Haskell developers agree it's a bad name. It breaks the principle of least surprise. Quite a few of the older library functions are a bit wonky (the plethora of error handling schemes and a few other typeclass element names come to mind).

As @bheklilr says, there is a restructuring underway which should help:

These are good places to start if you are interested in the meta of Haskell:

Upvotes: 10

MathematicalOrchid
MathematicalOrchid

Reputation: 62848

Why is it called that? Because it's usually the very last function in a monadic block of code. Usually the only good reason to use return is to set the final return value from your monadic action.

I too think that this is a very, very poor name choice. But it's not like we can fix it now...

Upvotes: 10

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