[Haskell-cafe] ($) not as transparent as it seems

[Tim Chevalier]

On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 2:03 PM, Luke Palmer <lrpalmer at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is probably a result of strictness analysis.  error is
> technically strict, so it is reasonable to optimize to:
>
>    let e = error "foo" in e `seq` error e
>

Yes, and you can see this in the Core code that Don posted: in version
(A), GHC optimized away the outer call to error. But in version (B),
the demand analyzer only knows that ($) is strict in its first
argument -- it's not strict in its second. So it's not obviously safe
to do the same optimization: the demand analyzer doesn't "look
through" higher-order function arguments IIRC. (You can confirm this
for yourself if you also want to read the demand analyzer output.)

If ($) were getting inlined, the code would look the same coming into
demand analysis in both cases, so you wouldn't see a difference. So
I'm guessing you're compiling with -O0.

Cheers,
Tim

-- 
Tim Chevalier * http://cs.pdx.edu/~tjc/ * Often in error, never in doubt
"an intelligent person fights for lost causes,realizing that others
are merely effects" -- E.E. Cummings