On Dec 15, 2010, at 5:52 AM, Yves Parès wrote:
> Hello Café,
>
> I was wondering if using infinite lists was a viable and efficient solution in haskell programs (I mean not simple prototypes) :
> I was considering using them to model agents in a hierarchical multi-agent application for school.
> A list would representate the state of an agent at a step of the program.
>
> Let's say we have two simple agents, one multiplying its input by 2 and the other dividing it by 4 :
>
>
> agent1 = fmap (*2)
> agent2 = fmap (/4)
>
> allValues = xs where
> ys = agent1 xs
> xs = 100:agen2 ys
>
> main = do
> mapM_ print $ take 100 allValues
>
>
> Of course, in a real program, an agent would rather take a list of multiple agents (i.e. a list of lists) in input, so that its ouput could depend on what several agents feed him.
>
> Some could state what I'm trying to do is FRP, and I agree. But it remains a simple goal so I'd like to keep the program simple, and not go into the whole complexity of a FRP framework (and I'm working with a non-haskeller).
> For instance, with my solution, I cannot dynamically connect or disconnect agents during the runtime, but I'll will not need to do that in my program.
> Besides, I'd like to try to implement this myself, not use an already existing framework.
>
> So is it viable or would the use of multiple infinite lists kill the performances?