Haskell - What is Control.Applicative.Alternative good for?
alternative-functor, applicative, haskell
Solution
It's commonly used with parser combinators. For example, if `space` is a parser combinator that matches a single whitespace character, `many space` would be one that would match consecutive whitespace.
I can agree that it's slightly out of place in `Control.Applicative`, though.
Problem
I was looking at the `Applicative` class within Haskell libraries and stumbled across `Alternative`. What is this class good for? A google search did not reveal anything particularly insightful. And it seems to be completely out of place, bundled as it is with the Applicative package. Could someone please post a possible scenario where you would use this class?