[Haskell-cafe] What can be UNPACK'ed?

[Oliver Charles]

Afaik, you couldn't UNPACK a list in the past because it's a sum type, and
sum types could not be unpacked. That has changed with the latest GHC, so
maybe that now works.

I'm pretty certain you can't unpack polymorphic fields, and this is why
libraries such as `ad` offer a polymorphic version, and a version
specialized to a particular type:

http://hackage.haskell.org/package/ad-4.3.3/docs/Numeric-AD-Mode-Forward.html
- polymorphic
http://hackage.haskell.org/package/ad-4.3.3/docs/Numeric-AD-Mode-Forward-Double.html
- specialized to Double and significantly faster

Does that help?

On Fri, Jul 28, 2017 at 2:48 PM Tom Ellis <
tom-lists-haskell-cafe-2013 at jaguarpaw.co.uk> wrote:

> What types can be UNPACK'ed?  From my vague understanding of what UNPACK
> does, it can only be types whose size is bounded by a known value, so
> whilst
>
>     data Foo = Foo {-# UNPACK #-} !Float {-# UNPACK #-} !Int
>
> is fine, presumably
>
>     data Foo = Foo {-# UNPACK #-} ![Float]
>
> is not fine.  Or is it?  Technically it could be possible to reserve enough
> space in Foo to store either a [] or a (:) Float [Float].  And if that is
> possible could we also UNPACK polymorphic fields?
>
>     data Storable a => Foo a = Foo {-# UNPACK #-} a
>
> or
>
>     data Foo a where
>         Foo :: Storable a => {-# UNPACK #-} a -> Foo a
>
> if either DatatypeContexts worked or my imaginary GADT UNPACK syntax worked
> (I'm not sure if either does).
>
> What are the limits of what we could reasonably get to UNPACK in GHC?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tom
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