[Haskell-beginners] strict evaluation and MIDI playback

[Heinrich Apfelmus]

Dear Dennis,

note that the `evaluate` function only evaluates to weak head normal 
form (WHNF). A list may be in WHNF even when the head and tail are 
unevaluated expressions. What you want is to evaluate the list of notes 
to normal form (NF).

The `Control.DeepSeq` module collects functions related to obtaining 
normal forms. In your case, changing the line to

   midiEvents <- evaluate $ force $ computeMidiEvents music

will probably do the trick, but you may need to implement an instance 
NFData for your `MidiEvent` type.


For more details on NF, WHNF and lazy evaluation in general, see also [1].

   [1]: https://hackhands.com/lazy-evaluation-works-haskell/


Best regards,
Heinrich Apfelmus

--
http://apfelmus.nfshost.com


Dennis Raddle wrote:
> I wrote a program in Haskell that does real-time MIDI playback. This
> involves computing what are called MIDI "events" (things like notes and
> volume controls) and then using the PortMidi library to play back the
> events. PortMidi also provides a time reading function that is accurate to
> 1 millisecond which is useful for timing the playback accurately.
> 
> I used 'evaluate' in the IO Monad to make sure that all events were fully
> computed before playback started. However I was still getting delays
> (timing errors). I added some code to the program that wrote the data to
> disk before playing it back, and the timing errors went away. Apparently
> 'evaluate' was not forcing a complete evaluation, while writing a disk file
> was. Or at least I think that's what happened.
> 
> But writing to disk is a hack. What can I do to get 'evaluate' to work?
> 
> A simplified version of the code is here: (the actual program is pretty
> long and complex so I posted something which is stripped down but I hope
> retains the essential features)
> 
> http://lpaste.net/144762
> 
>