[Haskell-cafe] Expanding do notation

[Robin Green]

David F. Place wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> Is there a program for expanding 'do' notation?  I am trying to  
> understand why the following code (from the Fannkuch entry) doesn't  
> hold onto the list 'p' causing a space leak.

You can desugar (i.e. expand) the do notation relatively easily, but 
that won't tell you what optimisations are being performed (e.g. code 
rearrangements) if any. Of course the compiler can't perform IO actions 
in the wrong order - but it can in principle generate code which 
generates a value from p early on, and then p can be garbage collected. 
I have no idea whether that's what's happening here, though.
-- 
Robin