
18 Nov
2011
18 Nov
'11
12:58 a.m.
Any ideas for further improvements?
I feel like there should be a canonical "what is WHNF" page on haskell.org that docs like this can link to. Namely, what it is theoretically, what that means for various examples of thunks (i.e. show how a sample graph would get reduced), and what that means for programs (e.g. this builds up thunks, this doesn't). All this info is certainly available, but it seems to not be as easy as it should be to find, e.g. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Lazy_vs._non-strict says "described WHNF..." and, well, http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/Laziness#Thunks_and_Weak_head_normal_fo... is pretty good actually. Maybe the haskellwiki page should just link to that.