Understanding strictness of ghc output

[Malcolm Wallace]

"Simon Marlow" <simonmar at microsoft.com> writes:

> Nope.  You can't return something without evaluating it to head normal
> form in Haskell.  Every value that is "returned" is a value, never a
> thunk.  If you want to return something unevaluated, you have to wrap it
> in a constructor.

Actually, there are two possible strategies for who evaluates a thunk
to head normal form.  The caller or the callee.  GHC says that the
callee always evaluates to HNF before returning the value.  But the
language does not force this implementation choice.  It is equally
possible for an implementation of the function to return a thunk and
for the caller to evaluate it if necessary.  Both strategies give the
same result semantically, since if the value in question is demanded,
it gets evaluated.

> If there's a Haskell implementation that compiles addHeight in such a
> way that addHeight _|_ e  /=  _|_, then I'd say it was wrong

So would we all!

Regards,
    Malcolm