[Haskell-cafe] conflicting variable definitions in pattern

Eugene Kirpichov ekirpichov at gmail.com
Fri May 15 04:34:21 EDT 2009


Why, then, not permit such definitions only for members of Eq?
My thoughts:
 - because it will break an important invariant indicated by Martin,
namely the one that says that pattern variables are not forced
 - it will make efficient compilation of pattern matching much harder
 - it will make the termination behavior of pattern matching dependent
not only on the term being matched, but also on how Eq is implemented
for that type
 - it will make the very rules of evaluation for pattern matching much
more complex, fragile and hard to understand: in what order should the
equated parts be evaluated? That influences termination behavior, so
it is important. In what order should equality comparisons be
performed in
f (Node a (Leaf b a) (Node a))) = b
?


2009/5/15 Salvador Lucas <slucas at dsic.upv.es>:
> Dear Martin,
>
> I think that the (practical) reason is avoiding equality checks during
> pattern matching.
>
> For instance, how do you evaluate this:
>
>  foo ((+1):(1+):[])    ?
>
> Both expressions in the first and second entries of the list are
> semantically equivalent,
> but from an operational point of view, you have to ensure the equality of
> two functions
> over an infinite domain (of integer numbers).
>
> Best regards,
>
> Salvador.
>
>
> Martin Hofmann escribió:
>>
>> It is pretty clear, that the following is not a valid Haskell pattern:
>>
>> foo (x:x:xs) = x:xs
>>
>> My questions is _why_ this is not allowed. IMHO, the semantics should be
>> clear: The pattern is expected to succeed, iff 'x' is each time bound to
>> the same term.
>> Isn't this allowed, because this would require a strict evaluation of
>> the 'x' variables?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Martin
>>
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-- 
Eugene Kirpichov
Web IR developer, market.yandex.ru


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