February 2007 - Haskell-Cafe

questions about core
by Matt Roberts 19 Feb '07

19 Feb '07

Hi all, I am trying to get a deeper understanding of core's role in GHC and the compilation of functional languages in general. So far I have been through - The hackathon videos, - "A transformation-based optimiser for Haskell", - "An External Representation for the GHC Core Language (DRAFT for GHC5.02)", and - "Secrets of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler inliner". and I am still a bit hazy on a few points: - What role do *the semantics* of core play (i.e. how and where are they taken advantage of)? - Exactly what are the operational and denotational semantics of core? - The headline reasons (and any other arguments that emerge) for having core *and* stg as separate definitions. I have an intuition on a few of these points, but I would love something concrete to latch on to. Thanks Matt R

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GHCi and multi-line support ?
by Dunric 19 Feb '07

19 Feb '07

Is it possible to write multi-line definitions in GHC interactive interpreter ? (like in Python interp. ?) When I try to write f.E. if-then-else in more then 1 line I get the following error: <interactive>:1:30: parse error (possibly incorrect indentation) ------------------------------------------ http://icqsms.cz/

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Summarize of Why do I have to specify (Monad m) here again?
by Marc Weber 18 Feb '07

18 Feb '07

Thanks for all the feedback. It did help me a lot. Now I know that if there is something left to discuss the topic should be: Would it make sense to specify partial type declarations ? I don't need an answer right now. Marc

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Re: Re[2]: [Haskell-cafe] Why do I have to specify (Monad m) here again?
by Sebastian Sylvan 18 Feb '07

18 Feb '07

On 2/18/07, Dean Herington <heringtonlacey(a)mindspring.com> wrote: > At 12:42 AM +0400 2/19/07, David Tolpin wrote: > >On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:30:47 +0400, Sebastian Sylvan > ><sebastian.sylvan(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> Well, I guess the H98 report would be a good start. But there are > >> multiple tutorials on type classes that will cover this, most of which > >> are available from haskell.org > > > >Sebastian, > > > >I did read H98 and would like an exact reference. > > See section 4.3.2, the third bullet item in the bulleted list. (Note > that the last sentence of that bullet item says that context > inference--though often possible--is deliberately eschewed.) Yes, but the key point still stands: when the user supplies a type, is should get taken seriously. Just because there may be a way to infer a context which may work in some/most cases, doesn't mean it's a good idea to do so because in all other parts of Haskell the user supplied type is taken seriously -- if you don't include a context, that means there *is* no context. Period. In the original example you really are telling Haskell that you *don't* want any context for "m". So if you want some inference to happen there, you need to find a way to specify that you want "any" contexts rather than no contexts. E.g. instance ( _ m) => GetMV m c where I don't think there's another way to do what you want without seriously messing Haskell up. -- Sebastian Sylvan +46(0)736-818655 UIN: 44640862

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Re: Re[2]: [Haskell-cafe] Why do I have to specify (Monad m) here again?
by Sebastian Sylvan 18 Feb '07

18 Feb '07

On 2/18/07, David Tolpin <dvd(a)davidashen.net> wrote: > >> Why the compiler cannot infer class constraint on m from class > >> definition in instance definition while it can in function type > >> definition? > > > > But it can't! If you give a type to a function, it will assume zero > > class constraints unless you specify them (just like it will when you > > give a type to an instance declaration). If you do something like: > > > > Hi Sebastian, > > it is not the example I brought. In the example I brought I showed how in > function type declaration assertion that an instance of a class is also an > instance of the other class is used. Take a look at my example. According > to what part of the type system logic type inference in instances is not > implemented That's completely different. The class in that case guarantees that the type has an "Eq" class, so it's okay to use the functions in the "Eq" class. You're using the guarantees supplied by the class. When you write instances, it's the other way around, the class has *requirements* that you must fulfill -- and there are multiple ways of doing it (Haskell won't guess, it will obey what you tell it -- if you don't give any class constraints it won't assume that they are there). The point I'm trying to make is that if you say that something is of a given type, Haskell will assume that you know what you're talking about. I.e. if you give a type which has no class constraints, Haskell will assume that you don't want any class constraints -- if this conflicts with something else, you will get an error. I think maybe this is where you're missing the point. *Leaving out* class constraints says something about the type. In other words, if you leave out a class constraint that does *not* mean that you don't care what class constraints the type variable has, it explicitly means that there are *no* class constraints on it (and using it in a context where a class constraint is required, is thus an error). In this case you *require* that any instances of a class is also an instance of the Monad class. But then you try to instantiate a type which is *not* in the monad class in this class. This is a conflict, and you should get an error. If you want to construct a type which is in the Monad class by constraining the type variable "m" to the Monad class, then that's fine, but you have to tell Haskell that this is what you want to do -- if you say that your type has *no* class constraints, it will take your word for it an report the conflict. Another alternative is that you want to produce the type by using a concrete type called, say, "M" which is in the Monad class, then that's also fine. Haskell won't guess what you meant (it can either be a spelling error, "m" for "M", or that you forgot to add "Monad m =>" in the instance declaration, or anynumber of other errors) and change it for you. Whenever you write something out, Haskell will take your word for it, if it fails, it's your fault, and Haskell will tell you what the problem is. -- Sebastian Sylvan +46(0)736-818655 UIN: 44640862

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Very fast loops. Now!
by dons＠cse.unsw.edu.au 18 Feb '07

18 Feb '07

The following C program was described on #haskell #include <stdio.h> int main() { double x = 1.0/3.0; double y = 3.0; int i = 1; for (; i<=1000000000; i++) { x = x*y/3.0; y = x*9.0; } printf("%f\n", x+y); } Which was translated to the following Haskell: {-# OPTIONS -fexcess-precision #-} import Text.Printf main = go (1/3) 3 1 go :: Double -> Double -> Int -> IO () go !x !y !i | i == 1000000000 = printf "%f\n" (x+y) | otherwise = go (x*y/3) (x*9) (i+1) To everyone's surprise, GHC 6.6 beats GCC (3.3.5) here, at least the two test machines: $ ghc -O -fexcess-precision -fbang-patterns -optc-O3 -optc-ffast-math -optc-mfpmath=sse -optc-msse2 A.hs -o a $ time ./a 3.333333 ./a 0.96s user 0.01s system 99% cpu 0.969 total ^^^^^ Versus gcc 3.3.5: $ gcc -O3 -ffast-math -mfpmath=sse -msse2 -std=c99 t.c -o c_loop $ time ./c_loop 3.333333 ./c_loop 1.01s user 0.01s system 97% cpu 1.046 total ^^^^^ Note that newer gcc's will statically compute that loop. Note also that -fexcess-precision must currently be provided as a pragma only. I declare GHC Haskell numerics (with -fexcess-precision) not so shabby! -- Don

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Fwd: Re: Re[2]: [Haskell-cafe] Why do I have to specify (Monad m) here again?
by David Tolpin 18 Feb '07

18 Feb '07

------- Forwarded message ------- From: "David Tolpin" <dvd(a)davidashen.net> To: "Sebastian Sylvan" <sebastian.sylvan(a)gmail.com> Cc: "David House" <dmhouse(a)gmail.com>, haskell-cafe(a)haskell.org Subject: Re: Re[2]: [Haskell-cafe] Why do I have to specify (Monad m) here again? Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2007 23:38:59 +0400 >> Why the compiler cannot infer class constraint on m from class definition in instance definition while it can in function type definition? > > But it can't! If you give a type to a function, it will assume zero > class constraints unless you specify them (just like it will when you > give a type to an instance declaration). If you do something like: > Hi Sebastian, it is not the example I brought. In the example I brought I showed how in function type declaration assertion that an instance of a class is also an instance of the other class is used. Take a look at my example. According to what part of the type system logic type inference in instances is not implemented? David

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Looking for documentation on Control.Parallel.Strategies
by Jefferson Heard 18 Feb '07

18 Feb '07

Is there anything that documents this further than the Haddock documentation available from Haskell.org or the GHC pages? I've gotten some basic parallelism to work using parMap and using >|| and >|, but I had a fold and a map that I could logically compute at the same time. I found this example for quicksort using GPH: import Strategies main = print (quicksort ([999,998..0]::[Int])) quicksort :: (Ord a, NFData a) => [a] -> [a] quicksort [] = [] quicksort [x] = [x] quicksort (x:xs) = (lo ++ (x:hi)) `using` strategy where lo = quicksort [ y | y <- xs, y < x] hi = quicksort [ y | y <- xs, y >= x] strategy result = rnf lo `par` rnf hi `par` rnf result Is the syntax the same for GHC using Control.Parallel.Strategies? If so, does the following execute the two computations from the where clause in parallel? import Control.Parallel import Control.Parallel.Strategies stats bigList summation mean = (stddev, proportions) `using` strategy where stddev = sqrt (fold ((+) . (^2) . (-mean)) 0 bigList) proportions = map (/summation) bigList strategy result = rnf stddev >|| rnf proportions >|| rnf result Thanks! --Jeff

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Application Level server state in Haskell Web server
by Pieter Laeremans 18 Feb '07

18 Feb '07

Hello, I'm trying to write a simple module for the haskell web server (hws- cgi). And I would like to write a simple module that maintains some kind of state for a session. But I'm I write I cannot do this in pure Haskell ? Without adopting the sources of the Haskell web server ? I'll examplify to make it more concrete : The requestHandler function a module has to implement has this signature. requestHandler :: ServerState -> ServerRequest -> IO (Maybe Response) Let 's assume I have this implementation requestHandler st _ = return $ Just $ mkRequest where mkRequest = okResponse (serverConfig st) mkBody hs True mkBody = HereItIs " This is a test" hs = mkHeaders [contentTypeHeader "text/html"] And I would like the response to include, for example, a number indicating the number of calls that has been handled by the module. I would concider using an Mvar but I can't "remember" the mvar between requests. Am I right to assume that the interface of the requestHandler method has to be adapted ? Or that serverstate has to be adopted so that it can act as a datastore ? kind regards, Pieter

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] How to solve this problem?It's quite easy in PHP.
by Henk-Jan van Tuyl 18 Feb '07

18 Feb '07

On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 22:44:25 +0100, David House <dmhouse(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On 16/02/07, Henk-Jan van Tuyl <hjgtuyl(a)chello.nl> wrote: >> Yet simpler: >> > formatTableItems (a,b) = a : " = " ++ (show b) ++ "\n" > > You can drop the parentheses around 'show b'; infix function > application always binds tighter than pretty much everything else. I missed that one; of course I knew it, but you could say it's in my passive vocabulary. -- Met vriendelijke groet, Henk-Jan van Tuyl -- http://Van.Tuyl.eu/ -- Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: https://secure.bmtmicro.com/opera/buy-opera.html?AID=789433

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