bug in language definition (strictness)

[Malcolm Wallace]

It has been brought to my attention (as errata editor of the revised  
H'98 report) that there is a bug in the language definition,  
concerning strictness annotations on datatypes.

In section 4.2.1, the translation of strict components of a data  
constructor is defined as
> (\ x1 ... xn -> ( ((K op1 x1) op2 x2) ... ) opn xn)
>
> where opi is the non-strict apply function $ if si is of the form  
> ti, and opi is the strict apply function $! (see Section 6.2) if si  
> is of the form ! ti. Pattern matching on K is not affected by  
> strictness flags.
>

yet, because of the definition of $!, this applies the constructor to  
its arguments right-to-left instead of the intuitive left-to-right.   
All extant compilers in fact evaluate the strict fields left-to-right  
in violation of the Report.

The same non-intuitive behaviour can be seen more clearly in the  
simple expression:

     (f $! x) $! y

in which you might expect x to be evaluated before y, but in fact it  
is the other way round.  (And here, the compilers do follow the Report.)

The fix I propose for H'98 (and equally for Haskell Prime) is to  
change the definition of $! as follows

     Replace
         f $! x = x `seq` f x
     with
         f $! x = f `seq` x `seq` f x
     in section 6.2

Regards,
     Malcolm