[Haskell-cafe] Class-like features for explicit arguments

Carter Schonwald carter.schonwald at gmail.com
Sat Apr 25 20:12:56 UTC 2015


are you sure you've evaluated how it interacts with this sort of
optimization? I think it actually gets you pretty far!

On Sat, Apr 25, 2015 at 4:06 PM, Ertugrul Söylemez <ertesx at gmx.de> wrote:

> > Here yah go https://hackage.haskell.org/package/reflection
> > It exploits how dictionary passing works in a pretty robust way that
> > ghc is likely to at some point codify officially.
>
> Oh, that one.  Of course I'm familiar with it, but it's less an
> optimisation than a clever way to implement implicit configurations.
>
>
> >> > Could that specialization be accomplished today using eds reflection
> >> > pkg? I guess not quite in terms of that pre apply pattern.
> >>
> >> I'm not familiar with that package and couldn't find it on Hackage by a
> >> quick search.  But I believe that it can only be done with compiler
> >> support, although with enough hackery you can probably get an ugly
> >> version of it using TH.
> >>
> >>
> >> > This is interesting.  And it's a good example of a larger problem of
> >> > not enough support for composable specialization with good sharing
> >> > across the use sites that doesn't require egregious Inlining.  At
> >> > least for code that isn't Type class driven.
> >>
> >> Indeed.  Specialisation is a really good way to get very fast code
> >> without making your executable size explode.  I believe that support for
> >> more fine-grained specialisation should and will improve.  I'm not sure
> >> how to make it more composable though.
> >>
> >>
> >> >> At the definition and instantiation sites I mostly miss defaults.  At
> >> >> the application sites I would love to have specialisation for certain
> >> >> arguments.  For example I would like to be able to tell GHC that I
> >> >> would like to have a version of my function `f` with a certain
> >> >> argument inlined.  Note that I don't want to inline `f` itself.
> >> >> Rather I'd like to preapply certain arguments:
> >> >>
> >> >>     f :: X -> Y -> Z
> >> >>
> >> >>     {-# SPECIALISE f SomeX #-}
> >> >>     {-# SPECIALISE f SomeOtherX #-}
> >> >>
> >> >> This would generate two specialised versions of `f` with exactly the
> >> >> given arguments inlined.  That way I can get a very efficient `f`
> >> >> without having to inline it at the application sites.  And as long as
> >> >> `f` is INLINABLE I can put those pragmas pretty much everywhere.  I
> >> >> believe this is exactly what happens for type class dictionaries.
> >> >>
> >> >> This can (and probably should) be a separate feature though.  For
> some
> >> >> of my applications I need to inline a huge chunk of code multiple
> times
> >> >> to compensate for the lack of this feature.
> >>
>
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