The Proper Definition of (evaluate :: a -> IO a)

[Simon Marlow]

Malcolm Wallace wrote:
> Nils Anders Danielsson <nad at cs.chalmers.se> wrote:
> 
>>> Where did you find the erroneous version?
>> Presumably he found it by reading the documentation for evaluate:
>>   http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/base/Control-Exception.html#7
> 
> Actually, I checked the source code for Control.Exception before asking
> the question, and those laws definitely do not appear there.  So now I'm
> kind of puzzled as to how Haddock managed to generate documentation for
> them!
> 
>>>> evaluate x `seq` y    ==>  y
>>> I'm not sure why anyone thinks this "law" should hold,
>> You seem to be assuming that evaluate x = x, which is not
>> necessarily the case.
> 
> Yes, I did make a mistake when I asked the question, in assuming some
> intuitive semantics rather than the actually written ones.  So taking
> the law at face value, it seems to say that 'evaluate' is supposed to
> force its argument, yet the result should be guaranteed to be in WHNF,
> even if the argument was in fact undefined.  Given that the result is in
> the IO monad, it can only mean one of two things:
> 
>   (1) That 'evaluate' should _not_ force its argument when it is called,
>       but that rather that the argument should be forced only when the
>       resultant IO action is executed.  This conflicts with the
>       documentation, which implies that the argument is forced _before_
>       the IO action is created or executed.  But I guess this semantics
>       accords with Isaac's suggested definition:
>           evaluate x = (x `seq` return x) >>= return

That's exactly right.  Evaluate was introduced because it does something 
different from (return $!).  We tried in the documentation to be clear about its 
semantics, but perhaps we weren't clear enough.  I'll add Isaac's suggested 
definition to the docs.

Cheers,
	Simon