[Haskell-cafe] Are bottoms ever natural?

Tue Dec 19 16:32:03 UTC 2017

In the strictest sense, the math will bottom in exactly the same scenarios that Haskell will, but a human is unlikely to make that mistake because the result is nonsensical. If the set x you've provided is the domain for a given function g, then it doesn't make sense to reason about g(106): since 106 isn't in the domain, g(106) cannot exist in the codomain. Yet, if you're trying to graph the function on a plane, you have to deal it somehow, because 106 will exist on the plane.

Getting to the original topic, it is impossible to avoid divergence in general, even in mathematics, which is in no way retrained by a compiler (although it may be limited by the operating environment ;).  Languages (or maths) which eschew divergence are not very powerful.
 Consider that arithmetic diverges, because division is partial. But we humans often learn to deal with bottoms iimplicitly, by eliminating them from consideration in the first place. That might be analogous to refactoring the program to remove all offending cases, and recompiling.

On December 19, 2017 8:35:57 AM CST, Baa <aquagnu at gmail.com> wrote:
>Pure functions can return "undefined" for some arguments values. So,
>such function is partially-defined. Its domain has "gaps". This can be
>coded in math, to avoid "undefined" (bottom), like
>
>  x = {-100..100, 105, 107..200}
>
>It's impossible in Haskell, but IMHO its possible in F*, due to
>DepTypes
>and RefTypes ;)
>
>IMHO this is the reason to have bottom: possibility to return
>"undefined" w/ simple correct type in signature (hidden bottom). If you
>have a way to code arguments domains, no need to have bottom for pure
>functions to "signal" gaps - gaps happen in run-time :) This is the one
>of reasons for bottom to exist, as far as I understand. May be there
>are
>other reasons :)
>
>===
>Best regards, Paul
>
>> Siddharth,
>> 
>> how would you deal with functions that terminate for some 
>> arguments/inputs but do not terminate for the others ?
>> 
>> Alexey.
>> 
>> On Tue, 2017-12-19 at 07:20 +0000, (IIIT) Siddharth Bhat wrote:
>> > > Is that really true, though?
>> > > Usually when you have an infinite loop, you have progress of some
>> > > sort. Infinite loops with no side effects can be removed from the
>> > > program according to the C standard, for example. So, in general,
>> > > we should allow programmers to express termination / progress,
>> > > right?   
>> > At  
>> > > that point, no computation ever "bottoms out"?
>> > > Shouldn't a hypothetical purely functional programming language
>> > > better control this (by eg. Forcing totality?) It seems like we
>> > > lose much of the benefits of purity by muddying the waters with
>> > > divergence.
>> > > From an optimising compiler perspective, Haskell is on some weird
>> > > lose-lose space, where you lose out on traditional compiler
>> > > techniques that work on strict code, but it also does not allow
>> > > the awesome stuff you could do with "pure" computation because
>> > > bottom lurks everywhere.
>> > > What neat optimisations can be done on Haskell that can't be done
>> > > in a traditional imperative language? I genuinely want to know.
>> > > What are your thoughts on this?
>> > > Cheers
>> > > Siddharth
>> > >
>> > > On Tue 19 Dec, 2017, 08:09 Brandon Allbery, <allbery.b at gmail.com>
>> > > wrote:  
>> >> > > Define "natural".
>> >> > >
>> >> > > You might want to look into the concept of Turing
>> >> > > completeness.   
>> >> One  
>> >> > > could define a subset of Haskell in which bottoms cannot
>> >> > > occur... but it turns out there's a lot of useful things you
>> >> > > can't do in such a language. (In strict languages, these often
>> >> > > are expressed   
>> >> as  
>> >> > > infinite loops of one kind or another. Note also that any
>> >> > > dependency on external input is an infinite loop from the
>> >> > > perspective of the language, since it can only be broken by
>the
>> >> > > external entity providing the input.)
>> >> > >
>> >> > > On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 1:47 AM, (IIIT) Siddharth Bhat   
>> >> <siddharth.b  
>> >> > > hat at research.iiit.ac.in> wrote:  
>> >>> > > > I've been thinking about the issue of purity and
>speculation
>> >>> > > > lately, and from what little I have read, it looks like the
>> >>> > > > presence of bottom hiding inside a lazy value is a huge
>> >>> > > > issue.
>> >>> > > >
>> >>> > > > How "natural" is it for bottoms to exist? If one were to   
>> >>> change  
>> >>> > > > Haskell and declare that any haskell value can be
>speculated
>> >>> > > > upon, what ramifications does this have?
>> >>> > > >
>> >>> > > > Is it totally broken? Is it "correct" but makes programming
>> >>> > > > unpleasant? What's the catch?
>> >>> > > >
>> >>> > > > Thanks,
>> >>> > > > Siddharth  
>> 
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