[Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] Nested guards?

[Iavor Diatchki]

Hello everyone,
Just to clarify, the intended semantics of my example was that it
should behave as if we were to duplicate the common prefix:

server text
  | Just xs <- parse text, "field1" `elem` xs   = ... do one thing ...
  | Just xs <- parse text, "field2" `elem` xs   = ... do something else ...

server  _ = ... invalid request ...

The difference is that the nested version is shorter, and probably way
easier for the compiler to produce reasonable code.    As I said in my
first post, I am not sure what would be a nice notation for nesting
the guards:  the notation that I used in the example was just the
first thing that came to mind, we might be able to do better.

-Iavor


On Dec 4, 2007 7:26 PM, Nicolas Frisby <nicolas.frisby at gmail.com> wrote:
> It seems there is previous background here that I am unaware of. I'll
> chime in anyway.
>
> What you describe as the "wrong semantics" seems to me to be the more
> appropriate. I am inferring that your expected behavior is explained
> such that the first server match ought to fail (and fall through to
> the second server match) because the pattern in the let fails. This
> seems odd to me. If the parse test expression yields a Just
> constructor, then hasn't the first server match succeeded and we ought
> now commit to the let expression?
>
> I apologize if this should be obvious to anyone familiar with the extension.
>
>
> On Dec 4, 2007 2:46 PM, Neil Mitchell <ndmitchell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi
> >
> > > server text
> > >    | Just xs <- parse text = let
> > >      x | "field1" `elem` xs   = error "... do one thing ..."
> > >        | "field2" `elem` xs   = error "... do something else ..."
> > >      in x
> > > server  _ = error "... invalid request ..."
> >
> > This now has the wrong semantics - before if parse text returned Just
> > [] the error invalid request branch was invoked, now its a pattern
> > match failure.
> >
> > I haven't used pattern guards that much (but will once Haskell'
> > standardises them, or they get implemented in Hugs!), but their syntax
> > seems quite natural. This extension seems to make it harder to
> > understand them, and gives some nasty , | parsing issues for a human
> > at least - quite possibly for a compiler too. Perhaps if you gave a
> > little grammar for extended pattern guards (compared to the original)
> > it would be easier to see how naturally they fit in.
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Neil
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