Yes, but interop only touches the surface of what is possible.
When a Haskell compiler could create IL code, it would be possible to
use the generated code inside a sandbox, e.g. to be used on the web as
loadable Silverlight code.
Of course the same could be said about other virtual machines, such as
Flash or Java, but I don't know about the tail call issue here.
I guess for now F# would be the best option, but it would be awesome
if Haskell compilers could have more backends.
I realize this is a very big undertaking, and has been mentioned
before, but it doesn't hurt to refresh the cache lines once in a
while, so maybe some bright student picks this up and hacks together
something cool during the summer :)
On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 4:03 PM, Paul Sujkov
Hi Peter,
it seems that this question has been already raised before:
http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2005-January/008244.html
and there are some .Net interop implementations on the net (it is a question how mature they are, however):
http://php.cin.ufpe.br/~haskell/haskelldotnet/ http://haskell.forkio.com/dotnet/
2009/9/16 Peter Verswyvelen
I heard that compiling Haskell to Java is not obvious since tail calls are not supported.
.NET's intermediate language (IL) does support tail calls, however it is currently slower than regular calls, and is not always supported by all JITs.
But given that F# will soon be officially released, I hope that eventually tail calls will work as expected, and fast
See e.g. http://blogs.msdn.com/clrcodegeneration/archive/2009/05/11/tail-call-improve...
So, might it be worth considering a .NET backend for a Haskell compiler?
Peter Verswyvelen _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
-- Regards, Paul Sujkov