You can't know that the final result of the computation (x `seq` (3:...)) will begin with 3, because sometimes it doesn't! More specifically, it diverges (without yielding the 3) if x diverges.
I don't think this is anything special about mfix: (let x = x `seq` 3:... in x) also diverges for the same reason.
Hope that helps,
David
If
f :: a -> IO a
for some a, and I want to use
mfix f
then f must not inspect its argument in any way, or the computation
will get stuck. In some cases, this seems a bit harsh. For example,
mfix (\x -> fmap (3 :) (x `seq` readLn))
looks perfectly reasonable. There is no need to inspect the return []
action to know that the final result of the computation will begin
with 3:. Is there a lazy IO mapping function somewhere that can work
such magic?
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