Re: [Caml-list] Unexpected restriction in "let rec" expressions

["Loup Vaillant" <loup.vaillant@gmail.com>]

Yahoo! I got it, many thanks!

2008/2/27, Pal-Kristian Engstad <pal_engstad@naughtydog.com>:
> Loup Vaillant wrote:
>  > loop :: ((a,c) -> (b,c)) -> a -> b
>  > loop f a = b
>  >   where (b,c) = f (a,c)
>
> Remember that values in Haskell are lazy, which simply means that they
>  are pointers to things that is either a pointer to a function to
>  evaluate it, or the cached value. (This works, since all Haskell values
>  are immutable.)

No problem with that. I just have some subtleties to learn about lazy
graph reduction yet. What is a bit harder is to turn myself in a
strictness analyzer when writing lazy code in my favorite strict
language :-).

> [...]
>
>  In other words, we're telling the compiler: Given a function f :: (a, c)
>  -> (b, c) and a value of type a, loop f a will give the result b by
>  evaluating (b, c') = f (a, c) where c' == c always.

That is the explanation I have waited for. I didn't have the idea to
push mathematical reasoning to the end, so I continued to bother
myself with an order of evaluation (even lazy), forgetting what a non
strict semantic really means. Thank you.

Loup

PS: do you use Ocaml (or whatever FP language or technique) at
naughtydog? What for, then (provided you can tell me, of course)?