interesting example of laziness/ghc optimisation

[Laszlo Nemeth]

* * * Ketil Malde <ketil@ii.uib.no> wrote:

> > runRandom last max num
> > | num > 1     = runRandom (fst new) max (num-1)
> > | otherwise   = snd new
> 
> What's the difference between the pipe-syntax, and a case statement,
> i.e. writing the function as
> 
>     runRandom last max num = case num of
>         1 -> runRandom ....
>         otherwise -> snd new

There is no difference. The 'pipe-syntax' (or pattern guards) gets
desugared (by the pattern matching compiler) to case statements i.e.:

runRandom = \ last max num.case (num > 1) of
                             True  -> runRandom (fst new) max (num-1)
                             False -> snd new

For a more detailed discussion see SPJ's book, Augustsson original
paper, or M Pettersen't thesis (LNCS 1549). 

HTH,
--laszlo