View source for Strictness without ordering, or confusion

[[Category:Proposals]]


As the Haskell 2010 Report does not specify any order of evaluation with respect to its parameters, the name of the primitive <code>seq :: a -> b -> b</code> is a misnomer.

Introduce the primitive <code>amid</code>, with the same (Haskell 2010 Report) requirements:

<haskell>
         infixr 0 `amid`
         primtive amid :: a -> b -> b

         infixr 0 $!
         ($!) :: (a -> b) -> a -> b
         f $! x =  x `amid` f x

</haskell>


This frees the name "seq" for use with a new primitive, analogous to the GHC primitive <code>pseq</code>, but not restricted to parallel programming.

If needed, "amidst" is one alternate basename for the ''deepseq'' library and its definitions.

References:

* [https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/glasgow-haskell-users/2006-November/011480.html Thread: seq vs. pseq], Haskell mail archive.

* [https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/issues/5129 Ticket# 5129: "evaluate" optimized away]; GHC bug tracker.


[[User:Atravers|Atravers]] 01:17, 7 January 2019 (UTC)