Re: [Haskell-cafe] Use unsafePerformIO to catch Exception?

On Wed, 2009-03-25 at 10:00 -0700, Donn Cave wrote:

Quoth Jonathan Cast :

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On Wed, 2009-03-25 at 09:15 -0700, Donn Cave wrote:

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OK, these are interesting phenomena. From a practical point of view, though, I could see someone weighing the potential costs and benefits of a exception handler outside IO like this, and these effects might not even carry all that much weight.

Well, sure. From a purely `practical' point of view, I don't know why you would even use a purely functional language (as opposed to trying to minimize side effects in an impure language). But if you're not concerned about purity, or ease of equational reasoning, or accuracy of a wide range of compiler transformations/optimizations/because it makes the generated code pretty to sort the formal parameters by name before forcing them-implementation decisions, then please do not use Haskell. There are many other languages that are suitable for what you want to do, and it would be a courtesy to those of us who *do* use Haskell because it is purely functional, not to have to explicitly exclude your library from our picture of the language's capabilities.

Concerned about purity, ease of equational reasoning, etc.? Sure ... but I guess hoping we can agree on practical reasons for interest in these things, as opposed to, or at least in addition to, their esthetic or religious appeal. I'm guessing you would likewise,

Nope. You must not have been following my positions in previous discussions. I am committed to functional purity for its own sake (just as I am committed to software development for its own sake; don't you *dare* suggest using Global Script!)

if only because a solely esthetic appeal is difficult angle to pursue because people's esthetic sensibilities aren't guaranteed to line up very well. And in fact the way I read the responses so far in this thread, the range of attitudes towards the matter seems pretty wide to me, among people whose views I respect.

So I thought it would be interesting to explore statements like "you must not do this", and "pure Haskell is not allowed to be non-deterministic", in terms of practical effects. No one would make a statement like that and not hope to be challenged on it?

What? Challenged by people who think Haskell should not be a purely functional language? I mean, that's kind of what it is. Again, if you don't want to use a purely functional language, there are *lots* of impure languages out there. There's no need to turn Haskell into one of them. jcc