Parsec: Applicatives vs Monads

Question

I\'m just starting with Parsec (having little experience in Haskell), and I\'m a little confused about using monads or applicatives. The overall feel I had after reading \"R

Answer 1

Following on from @pigworker (I'm too new on here to comment alas) it's worth noting join $ fM <*> ... <*> ... <*> ... as a pattern as well. It nets you a "bind1, bind2, bind3..." family the same way <$> and <*> get you an "fmap1,fmap2,fmap3" one.

As a stylistic thing, when you're used enough to the combinators it's possible to use do much the same as you would use let: as a way to highlight when you wanted to name something. I tend to want to name things more often in parsers for example, because that probably corresponds to names in the spec!