[Haskell-cafe] Re: Web server continued

[Achim Schneider]

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

> What is more strange is that a = a + 1 and a = 1 + a are somehow
> distinct. The second give a stack overflow almost instanly, but the
> first don't.
> 
That's because what the runtime does looks in the second case like
a = 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + ... + a ...
and the first like
a = a = a = a = a = a = a = ... = 1 + a
, which is a much more space efficient endless loop.

That's not specified though, the runtime could choose to let + force
the two chunks the different way round.


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