Repeated computations under a lambda

[Joachim Breitner]

Hi,

Am Dienstag, den 18.07.2017, 17:01 -0700 schrieb Conal Elliott:
> Here's the code in question, slightly rephrased:
> 
> > exampleC t = \ x -> x + s where s = sin t
> 
> I wrote it this way so that `sin t` would be computed once per `t`
> and reused for each value of `x`. The intermediate result `s` has
> type `Double`---not a function. Without `-fno-do-lambda-eta-
> expansion`, phase 2 of `ghc -O` causes the `s = sin t` binding to be
> moved under the `\ x -> ...`. I've been using this programming style
> for this purpose for longer than I can remember, and apparently I've
> been mistaken about its effectiveness at least part of that time.

usually it is very effective. GHC does this transformation not nilly-
willy, but only when its heuristics indicate that it is ok, usually
because the operation (here sin) is known to be very cheap. If that
code would call some unknown function, or allocate memory, then GHC
would certainly preserve your intention.

Greetings,
Joachim
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