[Haskell-beginners] Recursive Let

[Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH]

On 2009 Feb 9, at 20:43, Tom Poliquin wrote:
> I'm working on learning arrows.
> This has led me to ArrowLoop, which then led me
> to trying to understand the following,
>
>> tracePlus b = let (c,d) = (d,b:d)
>>              in c
>>
>> main = do
>>     w <- return $ take 10 $ tracePlus 7
>>     print w
>
> 1) How does recursion happen?
>
> Being an ex-Schemer I recalled that let x = 3
> get translated into something like
>
>   (lambda (x) ... ) 3
>
> So now there's a function involved. It's clear that b:d is
>
>   (cons b d)
>
> another function. So with appropriate plumbing
> I could see the thing recurses but the Haskell viewpoint
> eludes me.

The trick is that the c and d on both sides of the equal sign are  
identical.  Since this asserts that d = b:d, Haskell repeatedly  
prepends b to d (lazily, so "take 10" halts the recursion).

let (c,d) = (d,b:d) in c         = d
let (c,d) = (b:d,b:b:d) in c     = b:d
let (c,d) = (b:b:d,b:b:b:d) in c = b:b:d
...

As long as something consumes elements from c, that let will continue  
to expand recursively.

-- 
brandon s. allbery [solaris,freebsd,perl,pugs,haskell] allbery at kf8nh.com
system administrator [openafs,heimdal,too many hats] allbery at ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon university    KF8NH


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