[Haskell-cafe] Small optimisation question

[Andrew Coppin]

Suppose I write something like this:

  foo :: [Int]
  foo = concat (replicate 4 [4,7,2,9])

The value of "foo" is completely determined at compile-time. So, will 
the compiler generate calls to concat and replicate, or will it just 
insert a large list constant here?

Obviously, once somebody has completely examined the contents of "foo", 
after that point it won't matter either way. I'm just curiose. 
Concatinating some strings is cheap; I sometimes write constructs like 
the above using much more expensive operations. (Expensive in time; the 
space taken up by the result isn't that great.)