[Haskell-cafe] Re: Getting WriterT log lazily

[Ertugrul Soeylemez]

Hello Magnus,

although your approach is a bit more pragmatic, I always prefer to use
concurrency to implement predictable logging.  This is a bit more code,
but works much nicer and a lot more predictable:

  {-# LANGUAGE ExistentialQuantification #-}

  module Main where

  import Control.Concurrent
  import Control.Monad


  data LoggerMsg
    = forall a. Show a => LogLine a
    | QuitLogger (IO ())


  main :: IO ()
  main = do
    log <- newEmptyMVar
    forkIO $ forever $ do
      msg <- takeMVar log
      case msg of
        LogLine ln   -> print ln
        QuitLogger c -> c >> myThreadId >>= killThread

    forM_ [1..10] $ putMVar log . LogLine

    waiter <- newEmptyMVar
    putMVar log $ QuitLogger (putMVar waiter ())
    takeMVar waiter

Whenever you put a LogLine message into the MVar, as soon as the putMVar
action returns, it is guaranteed that the last log line has been
processed.  If you don't need that guarantee, use Chan instead of MVar.


Greets,
Ertugrul.


Magnus Therning <magnus at therning.org> wrote:

> I've been playing around with (WriterT [Int] IO), trying to get the
> log out and map `print` over it... and do it lazily.  However, I'm not
> really happy with what I have so far, since I've had to resort to
> `unsafePerformIO`.  Any hints are welcome.
>
> What I have so far is:
>
>    foo = let
>            _tell i = do
>                a <- return $ unsafePerformIO $ sleep 1
>                tell [a + 1 `seq` i]
>        in do
>            mapM_ _tell [1..10]
>
>    main = do
>        (_, ~res) <- runWriterT foo
>        mapM_ print res
>
> Without the `seq` the call to sleep will simply be skipped (is there
> an easier way to force evaluation there?).  Without `unsafePerformIO`
> all the sleeping is done up front, and all numbers are print at once
> at the end.
>
> The goal is of course to use code along the same shape to do something
> more useful, and then `unsafePerformIO` will really be unsafe...


-- 
nightmare = unsafePerformIO (getWrongWife >>= sex)
http://blog.ertes.de/