seq vs. pseq

[Malcolm Wallace]

Ross Paterson <ross at soi.city.ac.uk> wrote:

> When I've used seq, it's to ensure that a function is strict in that
> argument, and therefore has been evaluated before the function is
> called. (If the language had unlifted types, I might have used those
> instead). Beyond that, I don't care exactly when it was evaluated; it
> might be long before, thanks to propagation of strictness information.

When I use `seq`, it is sometimes in a construction like

    unsafePerformIO (emit "squawk!) `seq` x

where I am trying to force the impure side-effect to happen, exactly and
immediately before x is evaluated.  Whilst this is not good style in a
general sense, I argue that it is perfectly safe inside certain kinds of
library (e.g. for calculating coverage information, or for emitting
tracing information).  But if the language itself cannot guarantee this
exact placement of side-effects, then it becomes impossible to write
computation-reflective tools like Hat and hpc for Haskell, in Haskell.
That would surely be a sad state of affairs.

Regards,
    Malcolm