While loop in Haskell with a condition

Question

I'm having a little Haskell Situation over here. I'm trying to write two functions with monads. First one is supposed to iterate through a function as long as the condition is true for the input / output of the function. Second one is supposed to use the first one to take a number as input and write it as output until you enter a space.

I'm stuck with this, any help?

module Test where

while :: (a -> Bool) -> (a -> IO a) -> a -> IO a
while praed funktion x = do
                         f <- praed (funktion x)
                         if f == True then do
                                             y <- funktion x
                                             while praed funktion y
                         else return x



power2 :: IO ()
power2 = do putStr (Please enter a number.")
            i <- getChar
            while praed funktion
            where praed x = if x /= ' ' then False else True
                  funktion = i

Answer 1

import Control.Monad

while :: (a -> Bool) -> (a -> IO a) -> a -> IO a
while praed funktion x
    | praed x   = do
        y <- funktion x
        while praed funktion y
    | otherwise = return x


power2 :: IO ()
power2 = do
    putStr "Please enter a number."
    i <- getChar
    let praed x = x /= ' '
    let f x = do
        putChar x
        getChar
    while praed f '?'
    return ()

Some notes:

• Using if x then True else False is redundant, it's equivalent to just x.
• Similarly if x == True ... is redundant and equivalent to if x ....

• You need to distinguish between IO actions and their results. For example, if yo do

  do
      i <- getChar
      ...
  

  then in ... i represents the result of the action, a character, so i :: Char. But getChar :: IO Char is the action itself. You can view it as a recipe that returns Char when performed. You can pass the recipe around to functions etc., and it is only performed when executed somewhere.

• Your while called funktion twice, which probably isn't what you intend - it would read a character twice, check the first one and return the second one. Remember, your funktion is an action, so each time you "invoke" the action (for example by using <- funktion ... in the do notation), the action is run again. So it should rather be something like

  do
      y <- funktion x
      f <- praed y
      -- ...
  

  (My code is somewhat different, it checks the argument that is passed to it.)