I'm working through the book Land of Lisp in F# (yeah weird, I know). For their first example text adventure, they make use of global variable mutation and I'd like to avoid it. My monad-fu is weak, so right now I'm doing ugly state passing like this:
let pickUp player thing (objects: Map<Location, Thing list>) =
let objs = objects.[player.Location]
let attempt = objs |> List.partition (fun o -> o.Name = thing)
match attempt with
| [], _ -> "You cannot get that.", player, objs
| thing :: _, things ->
let player' = { player with Objects = thing :: player.Objects }
let msg = sprintf "You are now carrying %s %s" thing.Article thing.Name
msg, player', things
let player = { Location = Room; Objects = [] }
let objects =
[Room, [{ Name = "whiskey"; Article = "some" }; { Name = "bucket"; Article = "a" }];
Garden, [{ Name = "chain"; Article = "a length of" }]]
|> Map.ofList
let msg, p', o' = pickUp player "bucket" objects
// etc.
How can I factor out the explicit state to make it prettier? (Assume I have access to a State monad type if it helps; I know there is sample code for it in F# out there.)
If you want to use the state monad to thread the player's inventory and world state through the pickUp
function, here's one approach:
type State<'s,'a> = State of ('s -> 'a * 's)
type StateBuilder<'s>() =
member x.Return v : State<'s,_> = State(fun s -> v,s)
member x.Bind(State v, f) : State<'s,_> =
State(fun s ->
let (a,s) = v s
let (State v') = f a
v' s)
let withState<'s> = StateBuilder<'s>()
let getState = State(fun s -> s,s)
let putState v = State(fun _ -> (),v)
let runState (State f) init = f init
type Location = Room | Garden
type Thing = { Name : string; Article : string }
type Player = { Location : Location; Objects : Thing list }
let pickUp thing =
withState {
let! (player, objects:Map<_,_>) = getState
let objs = objects.[player.Location]
let attempt = objs |> List.partition (fun o -> o.Name = thing)
match attempt with
| [], _ ->
return "You cannot get that."
| thing :: _, things ->
let player' = { player with Objects = thing :: player.Objects }
let objects' = objects.Add(player.Location, things)
let msg = sprintf "You are now carrying %s %s" thing.Article thing.Name
do! putState (player', objects')
return msg
}
let player = { Location = Room; Objects = [] }
let objects =
[Room, [{ Name = "whiskey"; Article = "some" }; { Name = "bucket"; Article = "a" }]
Garden, [{ Name = "chain"; Article = "a length of" }]]
|> Map.ofList
let (msg, (player', objects')) =
(player, objects)
|> runState (pickUp "bucket")