[Haskell-cafe] Re: The infamous evil monomorphism restriction (was: A bit of a shock - Memoizing functions)

[Peter Verswyvelen]

I kind a mention this because it might be easy for a polymorphic CAF to do
memoization so its value gets computed maximum once per type, e.g (quick and
dirty code follows)
import           Data.Typeable
import           Data.IORef
import qualified Data.IntMap as M
import           System.IO.Unsafe
import           Debug.Trace

fooCache :: IORef (M.IntMap a)
fooCache = unsafePerformIO $ newIORef M.empty

foo :: (Typeable a, Num a) => a
foo = unsafePerformIO $ do
       key <- typeRepKey (typeOf value)
       atomicModifyIORef fooCache (updateCache key)
 where
   value = trace "foo is computed" $ 42
   updateCache key cache =
     case key `M.lookup` cache of
       Just n -> (cache, trace "foo was cached" n)
       Nothing -> (M.insert key value cache, value)

A compiler (and Haskellers more clever than myself) could certainly come up
with something much more efficient here.

On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 12:51 AM, Peter Verswyvelen <bugfact at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> From a previous email in the beginners list I more or less understood that
the monomorphism restriction will not exist anymore in Haskell Prime.
> Is this correct?
> On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 10:32 PM, Jonathan Cast <jonathanccast at fastmail.fm>
wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 2009-03-27 at 14:26 -0700, Kirk Martinez wrote:
>> > Your powersOfTwo function, since it gets memoized automatically (is
>> > this the case for all functions of zero arguments?),
>>
>> It is the case for all functions which have zero arguments *at the time
>> they are presented to the code generator*.  The infamous evil
>> monomorphism restriction arises from the fact that overloaded
>> expressions, such as
>>
>>    negative_one = exp(pi * sqrt(-1))
>>
>> look like functions of zero arguments, but are not, and hence do not get
>> memoized.  This behavior was considered sufficiently surprising, when it
>> was discovered in early Haskell compilers, that the construct was
>> outlawed from the language entirely.
>>
>> jcc
>>
>>
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