[Haskell-cafe] Mutable arrays

[Jonathan Cast]

On 5 Feb 2008, at 10:14 PM, Jeff φ wrote:

>
>
> On Feb 5, 2008 4:58 PM, Chaddaï Fouché <chaddai.fouche at gmail.com>  
> wrote:
> 2008/2/5, Jeff φ <jeff1.61803 at gmail.com>:
> > This is interesting.  I've been programming in Concurrent Clean  
> for a while.
> >  Instead of monads, Clean supports unique types for mutable  
> arrays and IO.
> > In Clean, I can write code that iterates through a mutable array by
> > converting it to a lazy list.  This is convenient because I can  
> use all the
> > nice list processing functions that are available.
> >
>
> You could absolutely write something like that in Haskell, but as some
> have pointed out, this is probably _not a Good Idea_, even though it
> works in your particular case, the array could be modified between the
> time you get the lazy list and the time you actually read it... And
> there's no way to insure it's not happening in Haskell, and I strongly
> doubt there is in Concurrent Clean, could you confirm ?
> Concurrent Clean can handle this in a safe way.  Here's a code  
> snippet for normalize_2D_ary from ArrayTest.icl:
>
> uToList_2D :: *(a u:(b c)) -> (.[c],*(a u:(b c))) | Array a (b c) &  
> Array b c
> map_in_place_2d_arr :: (a -> a) *(b *(c a)) -> *(b *(c a)) | Array  
> b (c a) & Array c a
> normalize_2D_ary :: *(a *(b c)) -> *(a *(b c)) | Array a (b c) &  
> Array b c & / c & Ord c
> normalize_2D_ary ary =
>     let (lst,ary2) = uToList_2D ary
>         max_elem = foldl1 max lst
>     in  map_in_place_2d_arr (\ x -> x / max_elem) ary2
> uToList_2D takes a unique array, ary, and returns a tuple  
> containing a list of the array elements and a "new" array, ary2.   
> uToList_2D does not modify ary, but Clean's type system forces any  
> function that accesses a unique array to thread the array through  
> and return a "new" array.  Under the hood the "new" array actually  
> uses the same memory storage as the original array.  So, it is  
> effecient.  Threading the array serializes access insuring the  
> array won't be modified until the list is complete.

I'm confused --- does uToList_2D return the head of the list before  
or after it finishes reading the array?  If before, then I don't see  
how the type system prevents me from modifying the array before I  
finish examining the list, as you claim.  If after, then the list  
isn't truly lazy.

> The type system will generate an error if I wrote code that breaks  
> referential transparency.
>
> Array and IO Monads can be implemented in Clean on top of the  
> uniqueness type system.  The do-notation could be added to the  
> language.
> However, the comments I've read so far lead me to believe the code  
> I've shown cannot be implemented in Haskell using a lazy list  
> without resorting to unsafe functions.  I'm beginning to suspect  
> the uniqueness type system of Clean is more general and flexible  
> than Haskell's monads.

You mean this particular monad, of course.

jcc

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/attachments/20080205/3aaae38c/attachment.htm