[Haskell-cafe] One-shot? (was: Global variables and stuff)

[Simon Marlow]

On 09 November 2004 11:54, Graham Klyne wrote:

> I've not been following the Global variables debate too closely, it
> seeming to have something of a religious wars flavour, but I noticed
> that an example being proposed was how to achieve a "one shot"
> execution.  Here's something I did when working on modifications to
> the HaXML parser: 
> 
> [[
> --  Memoization of withSocketsDo to prevent multiple calls.
> --  (cf. http://tangentsoft.net/wskfaq/articles/lame-list.html)
> socketsInitialized :: Bool
> socketsInitialized = unsafePerformIO ( withSocketsDo ( return True ) )
> ]]
> 
> Does it work as I think it does?  ARe there any problems I'm
> overlooking? 

You should add {-# NOINLINE socketsInitialized #-} to be on the safe
side, but in practice GHC won't inline it anyway.  The pragma would be
good documentation though.

Cheers,
	Simon