[Haskell-beginners] Errors and the compiler

[Christopher Howard]

Point of curiosity: Does an error in a Haskell program have a negative
impact on the compilers reasoning about or optimization of the code,
even if said error is never reached in the control flow? For example,
both of the following would have the same result:

code:
--------
case mExp of
  Nothing -> expr
  Just x -> f x

-- or...

if isNothing mExp
  then expr
  else f (fromJust mExp)
--------

In my naive reasoning, I would think that in the latter case the use of
fromJust introduces, from the compilers perspective, an additional
possible outcome (an error being thrown). This presumably would
complicate the compilers reasoning about the code, unless of course the
compiler is smart enough to figure out that the error will never be reached.

-- 
frigidcode.com
indicium.us

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