Re: [Haskell] Re: [Haskell-cafe] Haskell versus Lisp

On Wed, Sep 21, 2005 at 12:12:16PM +0100, Immanuel Litzroth wrote:

"Tomasz Zielonka" writes:

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On Wed, Sep 21, 2005 at 08:53:47AM +0100, Immanuel Litzroth wrote:

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"David F. Place" writes:

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I was hoping that the examples I requested would be examples of particular control constructs or extensions to the language's syntax and semantics. Though I admit that such things are possible in lisp, I suspect that their utility is minimal.

Ever heard of the loop macro? Immanuel Litzroth

I would be nice if you could give some examples for use of LOOP macro that you think would be cumbersome to translate to Haskell.

That was not the original question and I think that would lead to pointless discussion about the meaning of "cumbersome".

You are right, sorry. I agree that the ability to create your own control structures is a win. I only argue that when it's possible, it's better to avoid using macros for this.

Another example is UFFI, basically a bunch of macros to do platform independent foreign function interfaces.

Good example - laziness, HOFs and closures don't help much here.

I a currently writing a macro to generate the functions and datastructures to read an ipod database. This allows me to declaratively say (defheader (header-name inherits-from) (field-name length &optional reader)...). I doubt this would be easy in Haskell (maybe with TH it could be done)

I am doing similar things with Haskell. The amount of TH code needed is minimal, I prefer to put most of the machinery in the type system. Best regards Tomasz