seq vs. pseq

[Ross Paterson]

On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 06:25:48PM +0000, Malcolm Wallace wrote:
> When I use `seq`, it is sometimes in a construction like
> 
>     unsafePerformIO (emit "squawk!) `seq` x
> 
> where I am trying to force the impure side-effect to happen, exactly and
> immediately before x is evaluated.  Whilst this is not good style in a
> general sense, I argue that it is perfectly safe inside certain kinds of
> library (e.g. for calculating coverage information, or for emitting
> tracing information).  But if the language itself cannot guarantee this
> exact placement of side-effects, then it becomes impossible to write
> computation-reflective tools like Hat and hpc for Haskell, in Haskell.
> That would surely be a sad state of affairs.

Without admitting the existence of "unsafePerformIO", I submit

	unsafePerformIO (emit "squawk! >> return x)

where >> really does imply sequencing.