I'm working on camlp4 extension for haskell-like do notation in Ocaml, and trying to figure out how GHC compiles recursive do-bindings (enabled with -XDoRec).
I wonder if it possible for monadic fixpoint combinator to exist in strict language (like Ocaml/F#/SML/...)?
If yes, how can it look like? Would it be very useful?
问题:
回答1:
The F# computation expression syntax (related to Haskell do
) supports recursion:
let rec ones = seq {
yield 1
yield! ones }
This is supported because the computation builder has to support Delay
operation in addition to other monadic (or MonadPlus) operations. The code is translated to something like:
let rec ones =
seq.Combine
( seq.Yield(1),
seq.Delay(fun () -> seq.YieldFrom(ones)) )
The type of Delay
is, in general, (unit -> M<'T>) -> M<'T>
and the trick is that it wraps a computation with effects (or immediate recursive reference) into a delayed computation that is evaluated on demand.
If you want to learn more about how the mechanism works in F#, then the following two papers are relevant:
- Syntax Matters: Writing abstract computations in F#
- Initializing Mutually Referential Abstract Objects: The Value Recursion Challenge
The first one describes how the F# computation expression syntax is desugared (and how Delay
is inserted - and in general, how F# combines delayed and eager computations with effects) and the second one describes how F# handles let rec
declarations with values - like the ones
value above.