Christian Maeder wrote:
Colin Runciman wrote:
Let not the eager imperative tail wag the lazy functional dog!
Ideally functional programs should be independent of evaluation strategy and I assume that this is the case for about 90% of all Haskell programs. This leaves maybe the head or only the nose for laziness of the "functional dog".
"Ideally"? You just proved that you never *needed* laziness in your life. There is a full-fledged category of functional programs which wouldn't work without laziness. Saying that it is 10, or 0.1% has simply no sense. Colin demonstrated one such category. I need laziness to implement co-recursive data structures for scientific applications. (If you wish, have another Great Truth: "Ideally any programs should be independent of the language used for coding them..." Now, try to convince the world. ) Jerzy Karczmarczuk