(something happened at my previous attempt to post; my apologies)
Gregg Reynolds
On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 11:59 AM, Will Ness
wrote: The IO-action is not the I/O operation in the real world, but an action of recording a promise to perform it.
Ok, I kinda like the idea of accumulating a "log" of promised actions,
Maybe antilog or prelog or future trace or the like. In any case, I think
although I'd suggest a different term since log usually means history. It is a log of history of promises _requested_. Or it can be a plan then. An operational record. A list. :) that's useful for explaining lazy evaluation, but it's not directly implicated by monad semantics. IOW monad semantics and evaluation strategy are (mostly) orthogonal. I don't follow. Monad semantics in general is to chain together its action- functions (:: a -> M b). IO monad's semantics is that it promises to perform the recorded requests, if called upon. Not only is it directly implicated by its semantics, it IS its semantics. It is what IO-bind is. Other monad's binds will mean something else. We really ought to look at IO monad as just another kind of regular Haskell monad first. Here your idea from the blog helps, of separating the two worlds, of compiler and of its run-time system implementation (in my re-formulation). The operational plan built by IO monad may have multiple entries interspersed, going back and force to one world or another (getting new input into its placeholder and then going into Haskell to perform a chunk of pure computation with it, then possibly going back for another input etc.). Or in case of output only of known in advance values it can be compiled down to just one output instruction. Which is recorded and stored in an (:: IO a) value. Which can be run SEVERAL times by the run-time, or none at all. It's really helpful to imagine this operational plan as just a symbolic list of operations to be performed by some interpreter, capable of taking input, and calling back into Haskell code with it. The next step is to imagine it compiled into some kind of C with set-once semantics. To recapture, the only difference IO monad has, is that it refers EXPLICITLY to a compiler, and its runtime execution operations. But from inside Haskell it's just anther monad (I've said that already haven't I? :) ).
Another monad will have another meaning for its actions, latching another hidden data on their results, but they still can be seen as actions, in context of being sequenced and combined by that monad's bind.
I see, you're thinking of action as something like the promised eval.
It is an action of entering a request (for future I/O activity) to be recorded by Haskell, to be performed later by its run-time system (notice I avoid the word evaluated which is confusing as it alludes back to the Haskell-world calculations). It _is_ the meaning of IO-action-function's associated ...well, action.
As opposed to the action of performing actual IO. I fear that might confuse newcomers, though; probably better to stick with "function" terminology and discuss evaluation separately.
That's why I propose to call these bind-chainable functions action functions, not just actions, and actual I/O acivities to call just that, activity. Also notice I write I/O there where it belongs to the actual world action (... the terminology really MUST be refined here!). I think anything else is confusing. I'm open for another suggestion for how to name these "action-functions", but it's time the definite name is finalized; it's very confusing to see these IO- action-functions referred to, in all these tutorials, as performing real world I/O actions. They don't, of course. Better to avoid "evaluation" altogether (that seems to be your another idea from that log, is it?). I think the KEY is to always keep a clear separation of what is inside the pure Haskell world, and what is executed by its run-time, as an imperative program iving inside the real volatile world (capable of calling back into Haskell). And when inside the pure Haskell world, IO monad is ABSOLUTELY in NO RESPECT no different than any other. The operational log metaphor help keep this part of its semantics clear, from the other part - the fact that its operational log will actually get executed by run-time.
Correction: special name for IO "functions" (actually "IO terms" would be better). Why? They are just fuctions, of type (Monad m => a -> m b). What I'm saying, they are of special type, chainable by the M monad, so it seems logical to have a special name for such M-chainable functions, e.g. "M-action functions" (whatever the M).
Technically they cannot be functions - there's no "same input, same output" (at least not for input operations).
Yes there is. There's the whole point I'm driving at. We are not performing a computation with our code. We describe the computation that will be performed. Our values are functions. The usage of actual input is deferred to the runtime system. It's just like Show functions that (will) add their output onto a hidden parameter, the string-being-built (when called). Same here, with the log-being- built. Assentially, we're dealing here with the delayed application of carried functions, that's all. Here's again a simple outline of how an IO monad might look like, inside Haskell. It helped clarify things for me (dealing with output only, but still): ________________________________ data IO a = IORec -> (a,IORec) -- building the record of I/O activities to be performed instance Monad IO where return a rec = (a,rec) -- return :: a -> IO a (m ยป= g) rec = uncurry g $ m rec -- g :: a -> IO b putStrLn :: a -> IO () putStrLn a rec = ((),rec ++ [("putStrLn", a)]) ================================
No referential transparency. That's the problem.
Everything is referentially transparent. There are no side effects in Haskell. You know that. :) You wrote as much yourself (assuming you're the author of that blog). _______________________________________ IO value describes the computation that WILL BE performed OUTSIDE of Haskell. ======================================= That is a statement that is easy to understand, and is not at all confusing. I think.
This was a big problem for me; I find terms like "action", "computation", "function" completely misleading for IO terms/values. Why? A function of type (a -> M b) is a function that returns a value, (:: M b), tagged with some monadic hidden data. In case of IO, it is a promise to perform some actual I/O that's passed around, hidden. But the M-action function itself is just a regular Haskell function. It can be defined elsewhere, anywhere.
But the "promise to perform" is a matter of evaluation semantics, not denotational semantics. Denotationally these things cannot be functions.
But they are. They describe future computation to be performed outside of Haskell. Their values - inside Haskell - are one and the same - it's (:: IO a) entities. Which encapsulate the record, the _sceleton_of_future_computation_to_be_performed, which is ONE and only. It's just that it has holes in it, where the actual values will go into. It's like back into Prolog with its yet-unassigned variables. Or to any imperative language with set-once.
I saw your other note too. I think the idea that the runtime builds a "future log" is useful - simple and pretty easy to grok. But I would recommend keeping a clear distinction between Haskell's language semantics (denotational) and its compiler/runtime semantics (evaluational).
Denotationally, all a monad does is ensure sequencing, which is necessary to
I think we've established that compiler and runtime should be kept completely separate. properly order the (non-deterministic) IO values. No it does more than that. It ascribes actual meaning to what its M-action- functions mean, and it defines what it means for them to be combined in a chain. They are of course kept in sequence, in that chain.
With lazy eval this gets translated into the building of a "future log" etc.
Right, only better not to use "eval" - ever. Haskell has expressions which get reduced; values belong to its runtime system. They are OUTSIDE of Haskell world. We do not "evaluate" anything. It would be an imperative. :)
Thanks,-gregg
Thank you, for a great and enlightening discussion.
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