[Haskell-cafe] Mersenne-random and standard random API

[Aleksey Khudyakov]

On 10.02.2012 18:38, Yves Parès wrote:
> I just thought about something: basically all these APIs provides a "IO
> [a]" (where a is a randomly generable type) function.
> Is there a problem with the approach that is to rely on lazy evaluation
> to pass to pure code (either explicitely or through State) the infinite
> list generated in IO and consume its head each time we need a random value?
> Because there is no issue such as resource holding, like in the case of
> file reading and enumerators, which would make lazy IO a not so good
> approach...
>

It's more like "Seed → [a]". IO is not really needed here. I can see
following problems. None are real showstoppers (except maybe 2)


1. One may want to generate values of different types and/or
    distibutions. This is easily solved by state monad. But I can't
    see advantage over wrapped ST.

2. No way to make snapshot of generator state.

3. Laziness overhead. It may be significant if you try to sqeeze last
    bit of performance.