[Haskell-cafe] Evaluating arithmetic expressions at run time

[Andrew Savige]

--- Cale Gibbard wrote:
> Apart from moving to a lookup Map or something, a simple reordering
> of the arguments allows you to shorten things up a bit:
> 
> myeval :: String -> Int -> Int -> Int
> myeval "+" = (+)
> myeval "-" = (-)
> myeval "*" = (*)
> etc.

Thanks to all for the excellent suggestions. I'm liking the
Haskell version of this function a lot more now. :-)

To help me learn Haskell, I'm converting a small Ruby
program to Haskell. In Ruby this can be done in one line:

def myeval(x, y, op)
  x.send op, y
end

I had a feeling this sort of dynamic sending of messages
to objects at run time was impossible in Haskell, hence
my question. What I'm still unsure about is why this sort
of thing is impossible in Haskell. Is it a fair comment
to state that this sort of thing is impossible in Haskell
as a consequence of its static typing? Or could it be done
in a static typed language with more run time support?

Despite being longer, overall I prefer the Haskell version
because it is faster and "safer" (in that a number of run
time errors in the Ruby version are caught at compile time
in the Haskell version).

/-\



		
____________________________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Find a local business fast with Yahoo! Local Search 
http://au.local.yahoo.com