Spencer Janssen wrote:
On Aug 8, 2006, at 10:24 AM, Simon Marlow wrote:
It may well be better, but it doesn't have the same laziness properties, so it isn't the same function. eg. try this:
do filterM (\x -> return undefined) [1]; return ()
Ah yes, I missed that.
Of course we may discuss whether the extra laziness is useful, but I can't apply the patch as it stands because it would break Haskell 98.
Data.List uses "#ifdef USE_REPORT_PRELUDE" in places to choose between original and improved implementations. Is that an option in this case?
Not really, we don't want to have two versions of the base package. The USE_REPORT_PRELUDE code is there mainly for documentation, I don't believe it has actually worked for a long time now. We could have Control.Monad.filterM be different from Monad.filterM to avoid breaking Haskell 98, if there was a convincing enough argument that the semantics of Monad.filterM should be changed. Library functions usually strive to be as lazy as possible, because laziness can't be recovered if you need it. On the other hand, laziness might imply unfixable space or time leaks in library code, so it's a delicate balance. Cheers, Simon