[Haskell-cafe] do you have to use fix with forkio?

[Andrea Vezzosi]

2009/3/6 Daryoush Mehrtash <dmehrtash at gmail.com>:
> Two questions:
>
> a)   This  chat server implementation doesn't actually close the connection
> as a real one would need to do.  If you use "forever"  is there a way to end
> the loop so as to end the connection?
Yes, throw an exception and catch it from outside the forever.

> b) In Section 5 of this paper:
> http://www.cs.yale.edu/~hl293/download/leak.pdf
>
>> Comparing the definition of eSF and e reveals that the primary difference
>> is in
>> the fixed-point operators they use. e uses Haskell’s built-in fixed-point
>> operator,
>> which is equivalent to the standard:
>>
>> fix f = f (fix f)
>> eSF, on the other hand, is defined in terms of the loop combinator, which
>> ties the loop
>> tighter than the standard fixed-point operator. In particular, note in
>> Figure 6 that
>> loop computes the value-level fixed point as z, but re-uses itself in the
>> continuation
>> part. This is the key to avoiding the space leak.
>
> My reading is that the fix operator, at least in some cases, causes space
> leak.   Where as the arrow's loop, which uses "let" model,   doesn't have
> this issue.
>
> Question:  Do I need to worry about space leak if I am using the fix to
> instead of the "let"?
the definition of fix in Data.Function[1] actually uses let:
fix :: (a -> a) -> a
fix f = let x = f x in x

[1] http://darcs.haskell.org/packages/base/Data/Function.hs

> Thanks
>
> Daryoush
> 2009/3/5 Luke Palmer <lrpalmer at gmail.com>
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 6:27 PM, Donn Cave <donn at avvanta.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Quoth Jonathan Cast <jonathanccast at fastmail.fm>:
>>>
>>> > You can certainly use let:
>>> >
>>> >   reader <- forkIO $ let loop = do
>>> >       (nr', line) <- readChan chan'
>>> >       when (nr /= nr') $ hPutStrLn hdl line
>>> >       loop
>>> >     in loop
>>> >
>>> > But the version with fix is clearer (at least to people who have fix in
>>> > their vocabulary) and arguably better style.
>>>
>>> Would you mind presenting the better style argument?  To me, the
>>> above could not be clearer, so it seems like the version with fix
>>> could be only as clear, at best.
>>
>> I like using fix when it's simple rather than let, because it tells me the
>> purpose of the binding.  eg., when I see
>>     let foo = ...
>> Where ... is fairly long, I'm not sure what the purpose of foo is, or what
>> its role is in the final computation.  It may not be used at all, or passed
>> to some modifier function, or I don't know what.  Whereas with:
>>    fix $ \foo -> ...
>> I know that whatever ... is, it is what is returne, and the purpose of foo
>> is to use that return value in the expression itself.
>> I know that it's a simple matter of scanning to the corresponding "in",
>> but let can be used for a lot of things, where as fix $ \foo is basically
>> only for simple knot-tying.  Now, that doesn't say anything about the use of
>> fix without an argument (passed to an HOF) or with a tuple as an argument or
>> many other cases, which my brain has not chunked nearly as effectively.  I
>> think fix is best with a single, named argument.
>> Luke
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