[Haskell-cafe] The values of infinite lists

[Brian Hulley]

Claus Reinke wrote:
>> [snip]
> (the picture is slightly less simple, as 1/2 are repeated, hence
> construction and interpretation are interleaved, and later
> construction may depend on the results of earlier interpretation, but I 
> assume you know that;)

This is one of the issues that I was confused about, but I think it's 
getting clearer day by day :-)

>
> you don't actually need lazyness.

(except if you tried to define >> directly instead of using >>= as the 
primitive because then the second parameter would be an action directly 
instead of a continuation)

> you don't even need >>= to be
> non-strict in its second parameter, because that second parameter will be 
> a
> continuation function, and even strict functional languages tend not
> to evaluate under lambdas (so wrapping expressions in extra lambdas
> or eta-extending functions to make their outer lambda explicit is a 
> standard technique to delay
> evaluation in those languages).

Thanks! This is *absolutely* the central problem in my understanding since I 
never know whether I am allowed to assume that evaluation does not happen 
under a lambda.

For example, if I wrote a C function:

int foo(int x, int y){
     int z = 24 + 67 + 108 + x;
     int w = 200 + y;
     return z + w;
}

I would be very disappointed if the compiler didn't evaluate 24 + 67 + 108 + 
200 at compilation time, whereas with:

       foo x y = let
                          z = 24 + 67 + 108 + x
                          w = 200 + y
                      in z + w

       a = foo 5

if I understand you correctly I should assume that the expression

        (24 + 67 + 108 + 5) + (200 + y)

is left alone until the y argument is supplied to a, rather then a = foo 5 
causing a to be bound to \y -> 404 + y

>
> the standard papers do not make this very clear, but neither lazyness
> nor static typing are needed to add a monadic i/o system to a purely
> functional language (it took me a while to figure that out when I had
> to decide how to add an i/o system to a purely functional language without 
> either
> feature..).

Regards, Brian.

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slow of study"
     -- Midsummer Night's Dream