On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 2:39 PM, Hein Hundal
Thanks Allan!
I was hoping the C-Haskell mix would work. I am glad to hear that you have good things to say about it.
My main reason for thinking about the C-to-Haskell compiler was to address the question "Say you had a C program. Can you always convert it to Haskell in such a way that the compiled Haskell is not too slow and does not need too much memory?" Supposing that too slow means slower than 1/4 the speed of C and too much memory means twice the memory of C.
Do you know the answer to this question?
I would say probably yes, since Haskell can do much of the same thing C does or simulate it closely... But that's not idiomatic Haskell and thus very uninteresting and probably unreadable. A C to idiomatic Haskell compiler would be more interesting but extremely hard to write and the results would probably be pretty slow (since a good and fast translation would necessarily imply some change of algorithms and data-structure and so be too hard even for a smart compiler (needs a full AI ! ;)). If the question is : Can we always write a fast Haskell equivalent ? The response is probably yes (when we can write an Haskell equivalent) but with some effort and not mechanically. Of course, when we have a good enough C library, it may be better to just use the FFI in practice. -- Jedaï