Input Processing Loops in Haskell

[Simon Marlow]

> I apologize if this is a bit off-topic -- I'm asking it here because
> if what I want to do is possible, it may only be possible with ghc
> extensions, as opposed to vanilla Haskell......
>=20
> In many types of applications, it's common to have a loop which=20
> loops infinitely, of at least until some condition is met.  For
> example, in C-like syntax:
>=20
>   for (;;;) {
> 		a =3D get_input();
> 		if (a =3D=3D GET_OUT) break;
> 		do_comthing();
>   }

You can paraphrase this in Haskell, in the IO monad, like this:

   loop =3D do {
	a <- get_input;
	if (a =3D=3D gET_OUT) then return () else loop;
     }

In GHC this won't grow any stack each time around the loop, even with
optimisation off.  It depends on the actual implementation of the IO
monad, but I imagine the other Haskell implementations will also have
this property.

Cheers,
	Simon