Strict tuples

[Sebastian Sylvan]

On 3/20/06, Sebastian Sylvan <sebastian.sylvan at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/19/06, Manuel M T Chakravarty <chak at cse.unsw.edu.au> wrote:
> > Loosely related to Ticket #76 (Bang Patterns) is the question of whether
> > we want the language to include strict tuples.  It is related to bang
> > patterns, because its sole motivation is to simplify enforcing
> > strictness for some computations.  Its about empowering the programmer
> > to choose between laziness and strictness where they deem that necessary
> > without forcing them to completely re-arrange sub-expressions (as seq
> > does).
> >
> > So what are strict tupples?  If a lazy pair is defined in pseudo code as
> >
> >   data (a, b) = (a, b)
> >
> > a strict pair would be defined as
> >
> >   data (!a, b!) = ( !a, !b )
> >
> > Ie, a strict tuple is enclosed by bang parenthesis (! ... !).  The use
> > of the ! on the rhs are just the already standard strict data type
> > fields.
> >
>
> Maybe I've missed something here. But is there really any reasonable
> usage cases for something like:
>
> f !(a,b) = a + b
>
> in the current bang patterns proposal?
>
> I mean, would anyone really ever want an explicitly strict (i.e. using
> extra syntax) tuple with lazy elements?
>
> Couldn't the syntax for strict tuples be just what I wrote above
> (instead of adding weird-looking exclamation parenthesis).
>
> I'm pretty sure that most programmers who would write "f !(a,b) = ..."
> would expect the tuple's elements to be forced (they wouldn't expect
> it to do nothing, at least).. In fact !(x:xs) should mean (intuitively
> to me, at least) "force x, and xs", meaning that the element x is
> forced, and the list xs is forced (but not the elements of the xs).
>
> Couldn't this be generalised? A pattern match on any constructor with
> a bang in front of it will force all the parts of the constructor
> (with seq)?
>
> So:
> f !xs = b   -- gives  f xs = xs `seq` b, like the current proposal
> f !(x:xs) = b -- gives f (x:xs) = x `seq` xs `seq` b, unlike the
> current proposal?
>
> The latter would then be equal to
>
> f (!x:xs) = b

I mean

f (!x:!xs) = b


/S
--
Sebastian Sylvan
+46(0)736-818655
UIN: 44640862