[Haskell-cafe] IO, sequence, lazyness, takeWhile

[Jacek Generowicz]

On 2010 Dec 19, at 20:10, Brandon S Allbery KF8NH wrote:

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> On 12/13/10 09:15 , Jacek Generowicz wrote:
>> untilQuit' = (fmap (takeWhile (/= "quit"))) (sequence $ map (>>=  
>> report)
>> (repeat getLine))
>>
>> -- The latter version shows the report, but it doesn't stop at the
>> -- appropriate place, so I'm guessing that I'm being bitten by my
>> -- ignorance about the interaction of actions and lazyness.
>
> The reason this doesn't stop where you expect it to is that sequence  
> is
> effectively strict

That would explain it. Thank you.

Where is this fact documented? I mostly rely on Hoogle, which gets me to

     http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/base/latest/doc/html/Prelude.html#v 
:sequence

which says nothing about strictness.

How could I have known this without having to bother anyone else?

> You want the stop condition between the map-report and the repeat- 
> getLine.

Or, more generally speaking, between sequence, and whatever generates  
the infinite list. But can this be done in a similar style? Could I  
still use takeWhile and somehow lift it into IO?