[Haskell-cafe] Re: howto tuple fold to do n-ary cross product?

[Lennart Augustsson]

You can have seq and lifted tuples, but the implementation of seq
requires parallel evaluation.

  -- Lennart

On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 7:00 PM, Luke Palmer <lrpalmer at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 10:43 AM, Max Rabkin <max.rabkin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 9:30 AM, Luke Palmer <lrpalmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>  cross :: [a] -> [b] -> [(a,b)]
>>>
>>> It's just kind of a pain  (you build [(a,(b,(c,d)))] and then flatten
>>> out the tuples).  The applicative notation is a neat little trick
>>> which does this work for you.
>>
>> It seems to me like this would all be easy if (a,b,c,d) was sugar for
>> (a,(b,(c,d))), and I can't see a disadvantage to that.
>
> This is a tricky and subtle question, actually.  It has to do with the
> lifting of tuples; those two types have different domains.  For
> example, the element in the latter:
>
>  (1,(2,_|_))
>
> Has no corresponding element in the former  (there is (1,2,_|_,_|_),
> but that corresponds to (1,(2,(_|_,_|_))) ).
>
> Now, if tuples in Haskell were unlifted, meaning (_|_,_|_) = _|_, then
> there would be no issue.  But that has far-reaching consequences in
> the language design, among which the "seq" function would have to be
> eliminated (many people would not be opposed to this).  Also usage of
> unlifted tuples can cause subtle space leaks.
>
> Now, what all this domain theory has to do with practical issues, I'm
> not sure.  But you can't just do a slick replacement, because it
> changes properties of programs that did not know the difference.
>
> Frankly, I would prefer what you propose as well (actually, I would
> prefer it to mean (a,(b,(c,(d,())))), but it's the same idea).  But
> the change is difficult and requires thought.
>
> Luke
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