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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D">Pedro<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D">Some responses to your long message!&nbsp; (Which I attach for background)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D">Your example was unusual in that it used a lot of top-level definitions.&nbsp; GHC treats them slightly specially.&nbsp; Given:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; x = g 4<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; y = f x<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D">GHC does not transform into this:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; y = f (g 4)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D">which it would do in a nested let.&nbsp; Why not? Because the latter will generate code that dynamically allocates a thunk for (g 4), while the former will make
 a static thunk.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D">(An alternative would be to treat them uniformly and only pull out those nested thunks at the very last minute; but GHC doesn&#8217;t do that right now.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D">A disadvantage is that it&#8217;s not statically visible to the simplifier that x is used once. If we have a RULE for f (g n), it might not fire -- because of the
 worry that someone else might be sharing x. &nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D">I think this is the root cause of much of your trouble.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D">Incidentally , it makes no difference giving x an INLINE pragma.&nbsp; &nbsp;GHC is very cautious about duplicating non-values and currently
 not even INLINE will make it less cautious.&nbsp; That&#8217;s another thing we could consider changing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D">I&#8217;ll respond to part 2 (about generic programming) separately<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;color:#1F497D">Simon<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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