In the following code, line 4, I have an expression sandwiched between two IO actions in a do block:
1 doubleX :: (Show x, Num x) => x -> IO ()
2 doubleX x = do
3 putStrLn ("I will now double " ++ (show x))
4 let double = x * 2
5 putStrLn ("The result is " ++ (show double))
I understand do notation as chaining monadic operations together using >>= or >>. But how does that work when you have an expression in between? You couldn't just glue lines 3-5 together using >>.
I'm going to crib from my very similar answer here (though probably not a duplicate since that question doesn't explicitly deal with let).
The Report gives a full translation from do syntax into kernel Haskell; the parts relevant to your question are:
do {e} = e do {e;stmts} = e >> do {stmts} do {let decls; stmts} = let decls in do {stmts}
So your code desugars like this:
doubleX x = do
putStrLn ("I will now double " ++ (show x))
let double = x * 2
putStrLn ("The result is " ++ (show double))
==> do {e;stmts} rule
doubleX x =
putStrLn ("I will now double " ++ (show x)) >> do
let double = x * 2
putStrLn ("The result is " ++ (show double))
==> do {let decls; stmts} rule
doubleX x =
putStrLn ("I will now double " ++ (show x)) >>
let double = x * 2 in do
putStrLn ("The result is " ++ (show double))
==> do {e} rule
doubleX x =
putStrLn ("I will now double " ++ (show x)) >>
let double = x * 2 in
putStrLn ("The result is " ++ (show double))