On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 12:01 PM, Dag Odenhall <dag.odenhall@gmail.com> wrote:

What about MonadComprehensions, by the way? The way I see it, it's an even better fit for Applicative because the return is implicit.

Yes, or ordinary list comprehensions for that matter.

But there is a danger in desugaring to Applicative: it may introduce too much sharing. Currently a program like "main = print $ length [ (x, y) | x <- [1..3], y <- [1..10000000] ]" (or the equivalent in do-notation) runs in constant space with either -O0 or -O -fno-full-laziness. If you desugar it to a form like "main = print $ length $ (,) <$> [1..3] <*> [1..10000000]", then no optimization flags will save you from a space leak.

It might be better to require explicit opt-in to the Applicative desugaring on a per-do-notation/comprehension basis. Of course, finding good syntax is always such a bother...

I'm definitely +1 on the overall idea though, I have a bunch of FRP code (where I have to use Applicative) that looks just like Dan Doel's second snippet and it's pretty horrid.

Regards,

Reid Barton

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