[Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] Top Level <-

[Ashley Yakeley]

Ganesh Sittampalam wrote:
>> By global scope, I mean the largest execution scope an IORef created 
>> by newIORef can have. Each top-level IORef declaration should create 
>> an IORef at most once in this scope.
> 
> That's a reasonable definition, if by "execution scope" you mean your 
> previous definition of "where the IORef can be directly used". But it's 
> not process scope; two independent Haskell libraries in the same process 
> can no more share IORefs than two separate Haskell processes.
> 
> [what I meant by global scope above was "the entire world"]

OK. Let's call it "top-level scope". Haskell naturally defines such a 
thing, regardless of processes and processors. Each top-level <- would 
run at most once in top-level scope.

If you had two Haskell runtimes call by C code, each would have its own 
memory allocator and GC; IORefs, Uniques and thunks cannot be shared 
between them; and each would have its own top-level scope, even though 
they're in the same process.

-- 
Ashley Yakeley