#9495: Do What I Mean RULES for foldr2 look shady -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- Reporter: dfeuer | Owner: Type: bug | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: libraries/base | Version: 7.8.3 Keywords: | Operating System: Architecture: Unknown/Multiple | Unknown/Multiple Difficulty: Unknown | Type of failure: Runtime Blocked By: | crash Related Tickets: | Test Case: | Blocking: | Differential Revisions: -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- There's a comment in the source: {{{ The foldr2/right rule isn't exactly right, because it changes the strictness of foldr2 (and thereby zip) E.g. main = print (null (zip nonobviousNil (build undefined))) where nonobviousNil = f 3 f n = if n == 0 then [] else f (n-1) I'm going to leave it though. }}} This rule is intended to allow `foldr2` to fuse with ''either'' argument list. There are thus two problems, one already documented and the other not: 1. The rule can turn working code into non-working code, although this seems to be ''relatively'' unlikely. (The problem the above example is showing is that if the left list ends at the same time the right list bottoms out, the world goes boom. So `foldr2 f [1,2,3,4] (1:2:3:4:undefined)` appears to be a problem. You could argue this is not a big deal, I suppose. 2. The `foldr2/left` and `foldr2/right` rules are not confluent. They are both active in all phases, but if both list arguments are good producers, they will each want to rewrite the expression differently. So if you actually care about which one fuses, you need to explicitly block fusion with one argument using `NOINLINE`, which of course could easily muck up some other optimization. My uninformed opinion: nix the `foldr2/right` rule, and change the documentation to indicate that `foldr2` fuses with its ''left'' argument. -- Ticket URL: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/9495 GHC http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ The Glasgow Haskell Compiler