[Haskell-cafe] Compiler's bane

[Jeremy Apthorp]

2008/9/1 Andrew Coppin <andrewcoppin at btinternet.com>:
> Ryan Ingram wrote:
>>
>> What are you trying to get from the "let" binding?  Sharing?
>>
>
> Convinience.
>
>  let x = foo in bar
>
> is so much easier to write than
>
>  (\x -> bar) foo
>
> when foo and/or bar is large.
>
> Trouble is, as soon as you allow let-bindings, some clever person is going
> to start writing recursive ones. And actually, that's a useful thing to be
> able to do, but it makes figuring out the technical details... rather
> nontrivial. (Seriously, I had no idea I was going to get into this much
> trouble!)

I'm confused -- why is this different to having recursive top-level bindings?

Jeremy