[Haskell] Re: Re: ST/STRef vs. IO/IORef

[Srinivas Nedunuri]

OK thanks for the example. That makes sense. The state is being used locally
and not exported, which if you were using the IO monad you would be forced
to do

cheers

-s


"Iavor Diatchki" <iavor.diatchki at gmail.com> wrote in message
news:5ab17e79050803144943dacff6 at mail.gmail.com...
Hello,

On 8/3/05, Srinivas Nedunuri <nedunuri at cs.utexas.edu> wrote:
> > The most obvious disadvantage is that the IO monad has no equivalent
> > of runST.
> OK, I'm missing something here. What is the big deal about runST? Can I
not
> get the IO equivalent by simply running the program at the top level
> (assuming I don't have multiple threads going). Do you have a practical
> example of needing runST in several places in your program?

Here is an example (not that I am suggesting that this is how we
should write the function 'fib').  Notice the type of 'fib' --- there
are no monads, even though the implementation internally uses state.

import Control.Monad.ST
import Data.STRef

fib  :: Int -> Int
fib n = runST (do x <- newSTRef 1
                  y <- newSTRef 1
                  let loop n | n < 1 = return ()
                      loop n  = do x' <- readSTRef x
                                   y' <- readSTRef y
                                   writeSTRef x y'
                                   writeSTRef y (x' + y')
                                   loop (n-1)
                  loop n
                  readSTRef x)

-Iavor