Euler 43 - is there a monad to help write this list comprehension?

Question

Here is a way to solve Euler problem 43 (please let me know if this doesn\'t give the correct answer). Is there a monad or some other syntatic sugar which could assist with

Answer 1

Sure.

newtype UniqueSel a = UniqueSel {runUS :: [Int] -> [([Int], a)]}
instance Monad UniqueSel where
  return a = UniqueSel (\ choices -> [(choices, a)])
  m >>= k = UniqueSel (\ choices -> 
    concatMap (\ (choices', a) -> runUS (k a) choices')
      (runUS m choices))

instance MonadPlus UniqueSel where
  mzero = UniqueSel $ \ _ -> []
  UniqueSel m `mplus` UniqueSel k = UniqueSel $ \ choices ->
    m choices ++ k choices

-- choose something that hasn't been chosen before
choose :: UniqueSel Int
choose = UniqueSel $ \ choices ->
  [(pre ++ suc, x) | (pre, x:suc) <- zip (inits choices) (tails choices)]

and then you treat it like the List monad, with guard to enforce choices, except that it won't choose an item more than once. Once you have a UniqueSel [Int] computation, just do map snd (runUS computation [0..9]) to give it [0..9] as the choices to select from.