[Haskell-cafe] RE: Re[4]: [Haskell] Dynamic binding

[Bulat Ziganshin]

Hello Ralf,

Thursday, June 23, 2005, 11:40:13 PM, you wrote:

RL> a) building (i) a list of data is fundamentally different
RL> from building (ii) a list of anticipated results of each datum.
RL> I would be surprised to hear that this counts as a valid technique.
RL> BTW, you can do the *same* in a lazy OO language. (No lazy OO language
RL> at hand -- well lazyness can be simulated.)

sorry, "valid" technique is technique that work :)  i use in my own
program all the three ways i mentioned to solve problems of different
complexity

afair, you are relatively new to Haskell (relatively to my 1-year
experience :) and, i think, you are not share FP thinking style. when
programming in Haskell, i think in terms "what thing i will need in
this point of program?". if i need, for example, a possibility to check
string against regular expression, then i will pass a function which
does this check, not original RE. if i need a possibility to
draw a shape, i will pass action which draws this shape. if i need
several functions, i just combine them in a tuple

there is one interesting example in my program. i have a list of
wildcards and list of filenames and for each filename i need to know
number of first wildcard to which this filename matched. in early
stages of my program development i just passed list of wildcards to
file-finding routine (as [Wildcard]). then, i changed list of wildcards
to list of functions which check match against each wildcard
([Filename->Bool]). and after that, i changed this to one function which
just finds first True answer (Filename->Int). it was also more
effective to compute this function only one time (it was something compiled
on moment of computing and worked as fast as hand-written analyzer for
given set of wildcards)

as you see, i slowly migrated from traditional way of solving this
problem to perfectly functional way and it was required several months

RL> a) building (i) a list of data is fundamentally different
RL> from building (ii) a list of anticipated results of each datum.

i think that you don't have "Haskell brain" ;)  and therefore don't
"trust" functions, which are passed as parameters, collected in lists,
saved in data structures and so on. you are prefer to "put hands on"
some data, preferably an object, which can be manipulated with any
method declared in his interface. i'm right? ;)

FP encourage another way - passing functions which will then be applied to
some additional arguments, as in my program, where file-finding
function absolutely don't need list of wildcards. it just need to map
filename to wildcard number, so a Filename->Int parameter is just
enough

in the draw example, each elment in a list was an action (having type
IO() ), so i don't create list of anticipated results, i created list
of actions which can be performed, for example, by sequence_


RL> Anyway, even if people end up coding as you propose,
RL> it won't work in general. Think of mutation methods that
RL> change the state but preserve the type. Then your list will
RL> still be heterogonous. NO?

my second example was just of this type. it uses IORefs to hold
current state, but this IORefs don't need to appear in interface

see method moveTo, which changes state variable center, and method
draw, which uses this variable 

>> this state is just don't need to appear in interface definition :)
>> circle x y r

RL> You are not talking about state but constructor arguments.

"interface definition" is a structure ShapeInterface, which have only
fields for exposed object methods. so it supports any figures in
universe :)

RL> In OO, mutable state tends to leak to the interface,
RL> perhaps not as public fields, perhaps not even as public

only in C++ and other languages which need to calculate object size :)
declaration of _non-public_ fields in _interface_ is something strange
;)

>> this state is just don't need to appear in interface definition :)
>> 
>> if you need to maintain mutable state, this is also not a problem:
>> 
>> data ShapeInterface = Shape { draw :: IO (),
>>                               moveTo :: (Int,Int) -> IO (),
>>                               calcArea :: Float
>>                             }
>> circle x y r = do
>>   center <- ref (x,y)
>>   return Shape { draw     = val center >>= drawCircle r
>>                , moveTo   = (center=:)
>>                , calcArea = pi*r*r
>>                }
>> main = do
>>   figures <- sequence [circle 1 2 3, square 4 5 6, circle 7 8 9]
>>   mapM_ draw figures
>>   mapM_ (moveTo (0,0)) figures
>>   mapM_ draw figures
>> 
>> ref=newIORef
>> val=readIORef
>> (=:)=writeIORef



-- 
Best regards,
 Bulat                            mailto:bulatz at HotPOP.com