Re: [Haskell-cafe] Tutorial on Haskell

Bryan O'Sullivan writes:

Mark T.B. Carroll wrote:

...

I'm afraid no examples come easily to mind, though.

Here's a simple one: reading a flattened graph from disk. If your flattened representation contains forward references, you have to fix them up in a strict language. In a lazy language, you can refer to elements you haven't yet read, eliminating that book-keeping.

That's a good point. Indeed, I had used laziness in a programme that read a file that contained a series of entity definitions that could include forward references, I just couldn't remember exactly how I'd used laziness. (-: (It's also useful in some memoising, I think.) -- Mark