[Haskell-cafe] Thoughts about currying and optimisations

[Edward Z. Yang]

I believe this transformation is called the 'full laziness' optimization.
It can introduce space leaks if the computationally expensive test is
replaced with a reference to a space expensive value.

Edward

Excerpts from Yves Parès's message of Tue May 31 15:14:07 -0400 2011:
> Hello Café,
> An idea came to me: unless the compiler notices that stuffA and stuffB are
> equivalent, would it be correct to suppose that A is better than B?
> 
> stuffA x = if someComputationallyExpensiveTest x
>     then doSomething else doSomethingElse
> 
> stuffB x y = if someComputationallyExpensiveTest x
>     then doSomething y else doSomethingElse y
> 
> I explain: in stuffA, the function only depends on x, so when doing:
> a = stuffA xxx
> runs the expensive test once and for all, and a can directly be bound to
> doSomething or doSomethingElse
> so calling after:
> a foo
> a bar
> won't run the test
> 
> Whereas:
> b = stuffB xxx
> is valid due to curryfication, but:
> b foo
> b bar
> will both run the expensive test