[Haskell-cafe] >>= definition for list monad in ghc

[Daniel Fischer]

On Monday 16 May 2011 22:26:18, I wrote:
> On Monday 16 May 2011 20:49:35, austin seipp wrote:
> > As you can see, with the foldr definition, GHC is able to fuse the
> > iteration of the input list with the generation of the result - note
> > the 'GHC.Base.++' call with the first argument being a list from
> > [x..x*2], and the second list to append being a recursive call. So it
> > simplifies the code quite a bit - it doesn't really end up traversing
> > a list, but instead generating a list only in this case, as it stores
> > current iteration in a Int# and has the upper limit inlined into the
> > case statement.
> > 
> > I don't know why GHC doesn't have this rule by default, though.
> 
> Probably because it's not good. The core it generates for concatMap is
> better. ...

Aw, but that's some black magic which only works under special 
circumstances. You need nice types and a nice k for that to work out so 
neatly. Give it less to work on (a less simple k, for example) and you get 
the same for concatMap k, concat . map k and for foldr ((++) . k) [].