On Tue, Dec 19, 2006 at 08:42:06PM +0000, Neil Mitchell wrote: > Lack of mutable state, referentially transparent and laziness all help > with equational reasoning. Inlining is much easier in a lazy language > - and inlining is really handy for equational reasoning. > > Imagine: > > not_term = non_term > f x = 12 > > Now evaluating: > > main = f non_term > > In a lazy language the value is always 12, in a strict language its > always _|_. Now let's inline f: > > main = 12 > > In a lazy language the value is still 12, in a strict language the > value has changed.
I don't know if any actual language does this, but your inlining problem can be solved by letting _|_ = arbitrary behaivor. (Of course, I would want a debugging option that gives errors on all arbitrary behaivior.) _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
