Hal Daume III wrote:
You can't. [...]
Well, you can, but only for CAFs. This idiom/hack is used quite happily throughout GHC, HOpenGL, H/Direct, ... Slightly modified stuff from GHC's sources: ------------------------------------------------------------ -- global variables in Haskell :-) ------------------------------------------------------------ global :: a -> IORef a global a = unsafePerformIO (newIORef a) #define GLOBAL_VAR(name,value,ty) \ name :: IORef (ty) ; \ name = global (value) ; \ {-# NOINLINE name #-} ------------------------------------------------------------ -- examples ------------------------------------------------------------ GLOBAL_VAR(counter, 0, Int) GLOBAL_VAR(flag, False, Bool) ------------------------------------------------------------ Cheers, S.