id,summary,reporter,owner,description,type,status,priority,milestone,component,version,resolution,keywords,cc,os,architecture,failure,difficulty,testcase,blockedby,blocking,related
3292,Add an 'ignore' function to Control.Monad,guest,,"See http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/libraries/2009-June/thread.html#11880

In short, add a 'ignore :: m a -> m ()' function to Control.Monad. This lets us do things like 'forkIO $ ignore stuff', as opposed to throwing around all sorts of '>> return ()'.

This function could be widely used by many libraries & apps, and has been repeatedly invented and suggested (see the thread). So far no one has said a word against it.

{{{
- -- | Convenience function. This is particularly good for 'forkIO' and 'forM_',
-- as they demand return types of 'IO ()', but most interesting IO functions
-- don't return void. So one can wrap them with 'ignore' (essentially a call to 'unit').
ignore :: Functor f => f a -> f ()
ignore = fmap (const ())
}}}",proposal,closed,normal,Not GHC,libraries/base,6.13,fixed,,gwern0@…,Unknown/Multiple,Unknown/Multiple,None/Unknown,Unknown,,,,