:: [[a]] -> [a] package:distribution-opensuse

The join function is the conventional monad join operator. It is used to remove one level of monadic structure, projecting its bound argument into the outer level. 'join bss' can be understood as the do expression

do bs <- bss
bs

Examples

A common use of join is to run an IO computation returned from an STM transaction, since STM transactions can't perform IO directly. Recall that

atomically :: STM a -> IO a

is used to run STM transactions atomically. So, by specializing the types of atomically and join to

atomically :: STM (IO b) -> IO (IO b)
join       :: IO (IO b)  -> IO b

we can compose them as

join . atomically :: STM (IO b) -> IO b

to run an STM transaction and the IO action it returns.

The concatenation of all the elements of a container of lists.

Examples

Basic usage:

>>> concat (Just [1, 2, 3])
[1,2,3]

>>> concat (Left 42)
[]

>>> concat [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5], [6], []]
[1,2,3,4,5,6]