While loop in Haskell with a condition - loops

Question

I'm having a little Haskell Situation over here. I'm trying to write two functions with monads.
First one is supposed to iterate through a function as long as the condition is true for the input / output of the function. Second one is supposed to use the first one to take a number as input and write it as output until you enter a space.
I'm stuck with this, any help?
module Test where
while :: (a -> Bool) -> (a -> IO a) -> a -> IO a
while praed funktion x = do
f <- praed (funktion x)
if f == True then do
y <- funktion x
while praed funktion y
else return x
power2 :: IO ()
power2 = do putStr (Please enter a number.")
i <- getChar
while praed funktion
where praed x = if x /= ' ' then False else True
funktion = i

Answer 1

import Control.Monad
while :: (a -> Bool) -> (a -> IO a) -> a -> IO a
while praed funktion x
| praed x = do
y <- funktion x
while praed funktion y
| otherwise = return x
power2 :: IO ()
power2 = do
putStr "Please enter a number."
i <- getChar
let praed x = x /= ' '
let f x = do
putChar x
getChar
while praed f '?'
return ()
Some notes:
Using if x then True else False is redundant, it's equivalent to just x.
Similarly if x == True ... is redundant and equivalent to if x ....
You need to distinguish between IO actions and their results. For example, if yo do
do
i <- getChar
...
then in ... i represents the result of the action, a character, so i :: Char. But getChar :: IO Char is the action itself. You can view it as a recipe that returns Char when performed. You can pass the recipe around to functions etc., and it is only performed when executed somewhere.
Your while called funktion twice, which probably isn't what you intend - it would read a character twice, check the first one and return the second one. Remember, your funktion is an action, so each time you "invoke" the action (for example by using <- funktion ... in the do notation), the action is run again. So it should rather be something like
do
y <- funktion x
f <- praed y
-- ...
(My code is somewhat different, it checks the argument that is passed to it.)

Answer 2

For a pure version:
{-# LANGUAGE BangPatterns #-}
while :: (a -> Bool) -> (a -> a) -> a -> a
while p f = go where go !x = if p x then go (f x) else x
test1 :: Int
test1 = while (< 1000) (* 2) 2
-- test1 => 1024
for monadic:
import Control.Monad
whileM :: (Monad m, MonadPlus f) => (a -> m Bool) -> m a -> m (f a)
whileM p f = go where
go = do
x <- f
r <- p x
if r then (return x `mplus`) `liftM` go else return mzero
test2 :: IO [String]
test2 = whileM (return . (/= "quit")) getLine
-- *Main> test2
-- quit
-- []
-- *Main> test2
-- 1
-- 2
-- 3
-- quit
-- ["1","2","3"]
power2 :: IO (Maybe Char)
power2 = whileM (return . (/= 'q')) getChar
-- *Main> power2
-- q
-- Nothing
-- *Main> power2
-- 1
-- 2
-- 3
-- q
-- Just '\n'
see also:
http://hackage.haskell.org/package/monad-loops, http://hackage.haskell.org/package/loop-while, http://hackage.haskell.org/package/control-monad-loop.
http://www.haskellforall.com/2012/01/haskell-for-c-programmers-for-loops.html