Checking for WHNF (a horrible naughty thing)

[Sigbjorn Finne]

The appended snippet might help..

--sigbjorn

-- whnf.hs
import Foreign.StablePtr
import System.IO.Unsafe

isWHNF :: a -> Bool
isWHNF a = unsafePerformIO $ do
   stl <- newStablePtr a
   rc  <- isWhnf stl
   freeStablePtr stl
   return (rc /= 0)

foreign import ccall safe "isWhnf" isWhnf :: StablePtr a -> IO Int

/* whnf.c */
#include "Rts.h"
int
isWhnf(StgStablePtr st)
{
    StgClosure* c = (StgClosure*)(stable_ptr_table[(StgWord)st].addr);
    return !(closure_THUNK(c));
}

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jan-Willem Maessen" <jmaessen at alum.mit.edu>
To: "glasgow-haskell-users" <glasgow-haskell-users at haskell.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 08:10
Subject: Checking for WHNF (a horrible naughty thing)


>I would like to do a horrible naughty thing (which I promise never to  
> expose to the world).  I would like to tell whether a term is in  
> WHNF, without forcing evaluation of that term.  Something like:
> 
> isWHNF :: a -> Bool
> 
> Is there a way of doing this?  I can fake it with an IORef and much  
> unsafeness, but I'm wondering if there's a safe-but-ugly way of doing  
> the test in GHC.
> 
> If you're curious, I'm trying to compact exactly the evaluated spine  
> of a list without changing the list's laziness in any way.  It  
> remains to be seen whether this is even vaguely a good idea. :-)
> 
> -Jan-Willem Maessen
> 
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