[Haskell-cafe] Byte Histogram

[Richard O'Keefe]

On 8/02/2011, at 3:47 AM, Gábor Lehel wrote:
> 
> I dunno. As a language extension, would - let's call it BangTypes - be
> backwards-incompatible in any way?

Let's look at an intermediate step first, BangFunctions.

What this does is to say that there are two versions of "->":

   t1 -> t2

      What we have right now, which might be evaluated or not.

   !t1 -> t2

      The function wants its argument evaluated.  Suppose f is a
      value of this type.  Then a use of f is rather like a
      use of (\x -> x `seq` f x) and we can already write that.

Now if you write

	f :: !t1 -> t2
	f p1 = e1
	...
	f pn = en

you're making the function strict whether it would have been strict
or lazy.  But again, with BangPatterns we can already do that:

        f !(p1) = e1
	...
	f !(pn) = en

The advantage of BangPatterns is that they can be precisely and
selectively located.

The advantages of BangFunctions include
 - the forced strictness is part of the function's (published)
   *interface*, not its implementation
 - the question of what happens if some patterns for an argument
   are banged and some are not does not arise (I *think* that this
   can avoid some mistakes)
 - it's compatible with BangTypes but simpler.

So in some sense there is (now) nothing new here *except* putting
the information where people can easily see it.

BangTypes could be rather more complicated.  Clean 2 offers
lazy, head strict spine lazy, head lazy spine strict, head and spine
strict, head unboxed spine lazy, head unboxed spine strict
for lists, which are all different types; it also offers
strictness-polymorphic lists.  I never actually made use of this
because having so many kinds of list made my head spin.
Roughly speading, Clean 1 had BangFunctions, Clean 2 BangTypes.

One of the things that makes me wary of BangPatterns is that it seems
as though it's headed in a BangTypes kind of direction.

Oh, by the way, I got the Clean syntax wrong.
![a] means "lazy list evaluated to WHNF";
[a!] means "value is spine strict".