[Haskell] Re: IO == ST RealWorld

[Ben Rudiak-Gould]

John Meacham wrote:
> ST doesn't have exceptions which IO does. It would be no good to make ST
> pay for the cost of exception handling. GHC handles them behind the
> scenes (I think?) but in jhc they are explicit and IO is defined as
> follows:
> 
>> data World__
>>
>> data IOResult a = FailIO World__ IOError | JustIO World__ a
>> newtype IO a = IO (World__ -> IOResult a)

Supposing you had

   data STResult s a where
     FailIO :: World__ IOWorld__ -> IOError -> STResult IOWorld__ a
     JustST :: World__ s         -> a       -> STResult s         a

could static analysis then eliminate the test for FailIO in ST code? It 
would be pretty cool if the answer was yes, since it would mean that merging 
IO and ST would be an optimization instead of a pessimization (the test 
could also be omitted in IO code that uses only the ST subset). In jhc I 
suppose this would have to happen late in compilation, when you eliminate 
unused type parameters.

Actually, won't the test for FailIO always be eliminated by the existing 
points-to analysis?

-- Ben