Directories: A Convenient and Well-Behaved Formalism for Hierarchical Organization in Categorical Systems Theory

Abstract

This paper introduces an inherently strict presentation of categories with products, coproducts, or symmetric monoidal products that is inspired by file systems and directories. Rather than using nested binary tuples to combine objects or morphisms, the presentation uses named tuples. Specifically, we develop 2-monads whose strict 2-algebras are product categories, coproduct categories, or symmetric monoidal categories, in a similar vein to the classical Fam construction, but where the elements of the indexing set are period-separated identifiers like $\mathtt{cart.motor.momentum}$. Our development of directories is also intended to serve the secondary purpose of expositing certain aspects of polynomial monads, and is accompanied by Haskell code that shows how the mathematical ideas can be implemented.