[Haskell-cafe] One-shot? (was: Global variables and stuff)

[Adrian Hey]

On Saturday 13 Nov 2004 9:15 am, Keean Schupke wrote:
> >I'm not sure I understand what problem you think there is. Are the inits
> >you're talking about module inits? If so, I don't think there's a problem,
> >for several reasons.
> >
> >The idea under discussion is that a top level (x <- newThing) should
> >be lazy, (no action at all occurs until value of x is demanded). IOW,
> >it's exactly the same as the current unsafePerformIO hack, but not unsafe
> >because the compiler knows the semantics. So there is no implied "module
> >initialisation"
>
> Okay - I can see that with lazy semantics this might not be a problem...
> What happens with
> the second problem: That where module B uses A internally and C uses A
> internally, then
> I write a new module that tries to use B & C together... This
> potentially breaks B & C. I think
> you need the extra restriction that the top level '<-' bindings must not
> be exported. So where
> does that leave us.
>
> Top level inits are safe (I think) iff:
>     - They are lazy (the definition only happens when required)
>     - They contain only a subset of IO actions - namely those concerned
>           with name creation within Haskell that don't actually do any IO.
>     - They are not exportable from the module that contains them.
>
> I think that covers it... have I forgotten anything?

One of us has :-) Not sure who though.

I thought I'd covered the second problem you're alluding to already.
But if you think there's still a problem you'd better elaborate a little
more. Certainly I see no reason why top level TWI's cannot be exported
from a module. We don't have this constraint with the unsafePerformIO
hack.

For instance, if I had

 userInit <- oneShot realInit

is there any reason why userInit can't be safely exported and used
in many different modules? The whole idea was that it should be.

Regards
--
Adrian Hey