[Haskell-cafe] Lazy vs correct IO [Was: A round of golf]

Kim-Ee Yeoh a.biurvOir4 at asuhan.com
Fri Sep 19 10:31:40 EDT 2008



oleg-30 wrote:
> 
> I have not expected to see this Lazy IO code. After all, what could be
> more against
> the spirit of Haskell than a `pure' function with observable side effects.
> 

What could even be more against the spirit of Haskell than 
the original theme of this thread, i.e. code that makes us cry?

Lennart's piece fudges purity, agreed, but it reads nicely as
idiomatic Haskell, swift on the eyes if not on the machine.

Consider if readFile's semantics were modified, i.e. not lazy,
at least not always.

In the ideal world, a smart enough compiler would just do 
the right thing, i.e. the IO String returned would be strict, or better 
yet, it would automatically chunkify the read to obtain constant 
space usage.

"Lazy IO" is indeed a nasty can of worms, not unrelated to the issue
of monadic IO as a gigantic sin bin. We could avoid it entirely, or we 
could sort out and algebraize the different interactions into a happier 
marriage of the pair.

-- 
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Lazy-vs-correct-IO--Was%3A-A-round-of-golf--tp19567128p19573538.html
Sent from the Haskell - Haskell-Cafe mailing list archive at Nabble.com.



More information about the Haskell-Cafe mailing list