[Haskell-cafe] The values of infinite lists

[Paul Hudak]

Robert Dockins wrote:
> On May 23, 2006, at 9:50 AM, Paul Hudak wrote:
> 
>> If you disagree, then please tell me which features in Haskell (a  
>> particular I/O command, perhaps?) cannot be modelled as a function.  
> 
> IO.hGetContents?  I suspect the result of using hGetContents on a  file 
> you have open for writing in the same program can't be modeled  as a 
> pure function; at best you can say it depends on the order of  
> evaluation which isn't defined.  Not that it's necessarily a huge  blow 
> to your argument (hGetContents is viewed with some suspicion  anyway), 
> but it is a Haskell98 feature.

Ah yes, operations involving file handles are a good example, but I 
think the problem here is that we don't actually have a formal semantics 
for what's supposed to happen.  I recall seeing threads about this in 
the past, where in particular the interactions of lazy evaluation with 
opening and closing files was being debated.

But, I would argue that in principle we COULD (and probably should) 
specify a deterministic semantics if someone were willing to sit down 
and spell it out.

> Things obviously get more complicated in the presence of  concurrency.  
> I'm not certain, but I believe some of the memory  consistency models 
> being discussed for Haskell' are not expressible  using a 
> non-deterministic merge, which basically assumes that all  program 
> actions are serializable.
> 
> http://www.haskell.org//pipermail/haskell-prime/2006-March/001168.html

Yes, I agree, although I specifically excluded concurrency from my argument.

   -Paul