typelevel / typelevel/cats

Semigroups/Monoids/Groups with absorbing elements

Open
#3,876 8 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Dominant language
Scala
Stars
5.5k
Forks
1.2k
Avg merge
2d 10h
Merged PRs (30d)
5

Description

I recently had a need for a Monoid and Group which also have an absorbing element a defined by

combine(a, x) === combine(x, a) === a

These seem to go by various names, including "monoid/group with zero", "0-group", and "binoid".

Might they find a home in the cats hierarchy?

For reference, my current implementations: Binoid (laws) and Group0 (laws).

Edit: In fact, this hierarchy should probably start from a semigroup with an absorbing element (Semigroup0?).

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reviewing the referenced schrodinger/Binoid.scala and Group0.scala implementations and their BinoidLaws.scala and Group0Laws.scala files, then compare the proposed concepts with Cats' existing hierarchy. Done would require a decided placement and corresponding implementation and laws, but the issue does not identify the Cats files or a settled design.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
scala
Domain
backend-api-design
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
30/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.