Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Wikipedia on first-class object
I'll bite.
Please, don't.
So what do you expect: take 5 [1,2,3,4,5,undefined] to do?
Nothing! It's a value, not an instruction!
So it does seem to matter how much of the list it evaluates...
No, it's implementation details. I'm reasoning about values, not computations, and I use complete orders for reasoning. What really matters is that implementation gives me results that agree with this reasoning - until we consider performance issues.
Well, that depends of your notion of interesting. I defined it - I'm interested in things that are observationally equivalent.
That's your choice, and I certainly can't argue, but I can't help mentioning that this is a bit weird.
On 28/12/2007, at 7:19 PM, Miguel Mitrofanov wrote:
So what do you expect:
take 5 [1,2,3,4,5,undefined]
to do?
Nothing! It's a value, not an instruction!
Dang, I knew I'd choose at least one wrong word in all of that. :-P What is it's value, then? ... and what is the value of the other example I gave? (What would GHCi print? What is another, perhaps even simpler, expression it is equal to? ... a substantive answer please! Then please square that with your comment that we don't care how much of the list gets evaluated.) (Jules, thanks for your response. My questions are Socratic, not rhetorical. I'm benefiting by having to choose my words very, very carefully. :-) cheers peter
participants (2)
-
Miguel Mitrofanov -
Peter Gammie