[Haskell-cafe] global variables

[Isaac Dupree]

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Adrian Hey wrote:
> [cc'ing HPrime]
> 
> Isaac Dupree wrote:
>> The unsafePerformIO hack being used is not very satisfactory given how
>> many optimizations make it difficult to use safely in practice.  This
>> hack is also used many places.  I would be happier if that situation
>> were not true, and I suspect there's something like a consensus on
>> _that_. (maybe not as strong as "_needs_ a solution" in the short-to-mid
>> term future)
> 
> Considering the value that the Haskell community normally places on
> sound semantics, reliance on such an appalling hack seems pretty bad to
> me. If a solution doesn't find it's way into H' then how many more years
> is it going to be with us? It's just embarrassing :-)

Yes, also it places value on REALLY EXTREMELY (excessively?) SOUND
semantics, and on the modularity of the language even more than the
modularity of its uses (or something like that :-)

Maybe some sort of ISOLATE, DON'T_OPTIMIZE (but CAF), or
USED_AS_GLOBAL_VARIABLE pragma instead of just the insufficient NOINLINE
would be a good first step... if successful it would remove the
occasional need for -fno-cse for a whole module in GHC, at least.

Isaac
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