On 2008 May 12, at 22:18, Jeff Polakow wrote:

Then, I immediately blow my stack if I try something like:

    mean [1..1000000000].

The culprit is actually sum which is defined in the base libraries as either a foldl or a direct recursion depending on a compiler flag. In either case, the code is not strict enough; just trying to compute:

     sum [1..10000000]

There's also an insufficient-laziness issue with enumerations in at least some versions of the standard library, IIRC.  meaning that just saying [1..10000000] can introduce a space leak that can lead to a stack blowout.

-- 
brandon s. allbery [solaris,freebsd,perl,pugs,haskell] allbery@kf8nh.com
system administrator [openafs,heimdal,too many hats] allbery@ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon university    KF8NH