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Lens infix operators

An overview of what the different parts of lens-4.0 infix operators stand for.

I'll be calling anything that is used to look at data a "lens", e.g. Lens, ASetter, Traversal. When a more specific term is required, I'll be using the correct data type (which in particular starts witha capital letter).

(Once this list is properly polished, it might be worth a pull request.)

General

  • @: Provide access to the index of the data field looked at.

Example: ("hello","world","!") ^@. _2 is (1,"world"), since "world" is the entry at the second (_2) entry of the zero-indexed tuple, hence the retrieved index 1.

  • #: Takes an ALens parameter instead of whatever else the normal operator does. (# alone is a synonym for review, which builds a data structure out of a lens.)

Getting

  • ^: General "view data" operator.

  • .: Single value.

Example: (1, "hello") ^. _2 views the second element, "hello".

  • ..: Multiple values as a list.

Example: "Hello, World!" ^.. folded . filtered isLower keeps only lower case letters, result: "elloorld".

  • ?: Return the first value of a lookup, or Nothing if there is none.

Example: [1..10] ^? folded picks the first element of the list, resulting in Just 1. [] ^? folded on the other hand is Nothing.

  • ?!: Unsafe version of ?: crashes when there is no value.

Example: [1..10] ^?! folded is 1, while [] ^?! folded is a runtime error.

  • !: Perform a monadic action with the data.

Example: ["Hello","World!"] ^! folded . act putStrLn prints the list, one element at a time.

  • !!: ! for folds, so that multiple actions can be performed in one go.

Example: [getLine, getLine] ^!! folded . acts reads two lines, and returns the results together in a list.

  • !?: Like !! combined with ?: perform all actions, but return only the first result (safely).

Example: [getLine, getLine] ^!? folded . acts reads two lines, and returns Just <first line>.

Setting

  • ~: General "set value" operator.

  • =: Same as ~, but set an implicit MonadState state.

  • .: Specify the new value directly.

Example: (_2 .~ "Mrs. Robinson") ("Hello", "World") [greets Mrs. Robinson.] hello-mrs-robinson

  • ?: Use Just the specified value, i.e. . with an added Just. This mostly seems to be there for symmetry with the getter-?.

Example: (_2 ?~ "kidding") ("Hello", "World") greets someone and takes it back immediately. Safe in Haskell, not so safe otherwise.

  • %: Modify, chosen as a pun for other languages use % as the modulo operator.

Example: (traversed %@~ replicate) "Hello" replaces each character with an index-time replication of itself, yielding ["","e","ll","lll","oooo"].

  • %%: ?

  • <: Also return the new value of the modified field. Useful to check on what was actually modified deep inside a structure.

Example: (traversed <%~ Sum . length) (words "let it be") maps every list entry to its length, and also the monoidal summary of all modifications. Stripping the Sum constructors, the result is (7, [3,2,2]).

  • <<: Like <, but returns the old value instead of the new one.

Example: (traversed <<%~ length) (words "let it be") collects the unmodified values before applying the function, yielding ("letitbe", [3,2,2]).

Convenience definitions

The following symbols are all used as shortcuts to do something specific with a value. <op>~ x generally applies (<op> x) to the fields pointed at, so for example &&~ x applies (&& x), and <>~ x mappends x.

  • Standard operations - Standard arithmetic: +, -, *, // (Divide; / was not taken because /= is inequality), ^, ^^, ** - Boolean: ||, && - Monoidal: <>
  • Specialized operations (located in *.Lens submodules): - File paths: </>, <.> - Bitwise arithmetic: .|., .&.

More examples

  • <%~ modifies (%) a field inside a structure, and also returns the new value of that field (<). When applied to a Traversal, it modifies all targeted values, and also returns a "monoidal summary" (e.g. a list) of all the modified values.

  • <<>~ is first and foremost in the library because in a language that has robot monkey operators (:[]) and Kleisli fish >=>, a rat operator must not be missing.

    It also mappends (<>) a value to a field and returns the new value along with the modified structure (the first <).

Other operators

  • &: Like ordinary $, but flipped. Useful for chaining lens operations, as they typically read left-to-right.

Example: (["hello", "world"], 42) & _1.mapped <>~ "!" & _2 +~ 10 first appends "!" to all list elements, and then adds 10 to the second tuple component, resulting in (["hello!", "world!"], 52).

  • <|, |>: Prepend (cons) and append (snoc). Be careful to specify the arguments in the right order or you'll be greeted with a giant error message.

Example: 0 <| [1,2,3] evaluates to [0,1,2,3], [1,2,3] |> 4 to [1,2,3,4].

  • ??: Most useful when applied to the function Functor, which allows seeing ?? as a placeholder for the first of a two-argument function.

Example: f ?? x is equivalent to \y -> f y x.

  • <.>, .>, <.: Composition of indexed functions.

  • <~: Execute a MonadState action, and store the result in the state fields pointed at by the lens. Named to resemble with the <- symbol, which assigns the result of a monadic action to an ordinary name.

Example: _2 <~ fmap (uncurry (++)) get } will execute the action on the right hand side; the result is the concatenation of the two tuple elements of the state. This is then set as the second field of the state.