On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 02:09:18PM -0500, Samuel Bronson wrote:
It isn't really *unsafe*, exactly. But it might not be purely functional. However, it isn't imperative or anything like that. Also, for rotate, I needed to change the implementations in the *libraries* (it was only the GHC-specific implementations, though). (Also, nobody seems to have applied that patch yet for some reason.) And I needed to change them to use the raw, unchecked primops.
Oh, that reminds me. Why call them "unsafe"? Why not "unchecked" as GHC's primops are called?
yes definitely. we should reserve 'unsafe' for when we really mean it. I see three levels of unsafeness, and try to use them appropriately. unsafeFoo - can break the static properties of the program. such as unsafePerformIO breaking typesafety, or the obvious unsafeCoerce unwiseFoo - can break dynamic properties of the program, the program will not go wrong or see any inconsistant results within a single run, but it might see different ones if run again or on a different machine. uncheckedFoo - under certain conditions that arn't checked for, this routine may produce well defined, but unspecified behavior. (as in, the behavior might depend on something compiler or architecture specific) John -- John Meacham - ⑆repetae.net⑆john⑈