[Haskell-cafe] Re: New to Haskell

[Cristian Baboi]

On Tue, 18 Dec 2007 11:56:36 +0200, Jon Fairbairn  
<jon.fairbairn at cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> "Cristian Baboi" <cristi at ot.onrc.ro> writes:


>> - the syntax for a block
>
> Not sure what you mean by "block".
>
> do a <- [1..10]
>    b <- [3,4]
>    return (a,b)
>
> is an expression... you can write that same expression as
> do {a <- [1..10]; b <- [3,4]; return (a,b)} too.


I mean anything that you can put between "{" "}", and between ";"


>> - the adhoc syntax rules (how to distinguish among a tuple
>> and a  pharanthesized expression

> a tuple has commas in it. I'll grant that (x) not being a
> 1-tuple is a little ad-hoc, but there really is very little
> ad-hockery in Haskell (and a 1-tuple behaves very much like
> a plain value after all).

Is this ([1 ,2 ,3 ,4]) a tuple or what ?
It has commas in it!

>> - the fact that lambda expressions are not the same thing
>> as "algebraic data" values

> It might help to know why you think they might be the same;
> the syntax is different and the name is different...

Ah, just a thought, nothing more.
Lambda expressions are values, which is just data, after all.
Even C can apply a function variable to an argument (function pointers).


>> - what guarantees are made by the LANGUAGE that an IO action
>> (such as  do  putStrLn "Hello world" ) is not performed
>> twice

> As has been pointed out, «do putStrLn "Hello world"» is an
> expression that you can bind to a variable and use as many
> times as you like. Incidentally, it means the same as
> «putStrLn "Hello World"»; do connects a sequence of bindings
> and expressions, so you don't need it if there's nothing to
> be connected to.

Yes, but that was not the question.
What make you so sure it will be printed the exact number of times you  
intended ?

>> - the lambda expressions can be written (input) but cannot
>> be printed  (output)

> This is a fundamental property of the language.  A lambda
> expression is programme and at runtime the system doesn't
> know one lambda expression from another (all it can do with
> one is apply it to something).

Even C can apply a function variable to an argument (function pointers).
What make Haskell different beside the "lazy evaluation" and "mutable  
variables" things ?

>> The biggest problem for me, so far, is the last one.
>
> I can't see how your example illustrates that, I'm afraid.

In a very strange way. Nevermind.

>> Here is some strange example:
>
>> What I don't understand is why I'm forced to use guards like
>> x==aa in cc,  when aa is clearly bounded (is 7) and why in
>> function h, the bounded u and  v become free variables in
>> the case expression.

> I would have liked the language design to have permitted
> case to pattern match against variables too, but the
> question is, what would the syntax be?  There was a fair bit
> of discussion about this when the language was designed (and
> since), but no-one could come up with a good way of doing
> it. One aspect of it is this: we want

> f 0 = 42
> f x = 3*x
>
> to work, and we want all function definitions to be
> translated into the core language in the same way,
> so you get
> f = \a -> case a of
>             0 -> 42
>             x -> 3*x
>
> and given that, you can't have a variable on the LHS of ->
> do anything other than get bound to the value of the
> expression in the case (a in the example). It's not just a
> the top level, either:
>
> f Nothing = 0
> f (Just n) = n+1
>
> just means
> f = \v -> case v of
>             Nothing -> 0
>             Just n -> n+1
>
> so you can't have variables inside constructors do anything
> but get bound at that point.
>
>


Thank you very much!


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