[Haskell] Boxing (Day) Question

Tomasz Zielonka tomasz.zielonka at gmail.com
Mon Dec 26 08:46:51 EST 2005


On Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 02:22:57PM +0100, Niklas Sorensson wrote:
> That reminds me of something that I have wondered about for some
> time. Why is there such reluctance to instantiate polymorhic functions
> with the types with which they are used? (This isn't done automatically
> in complilers right?)
> 
> I can imagine that it is akward to delay code generation until all uses
> of a function are known, and that in some cases there may be infinitely
> many instances needed. But apart from that, what are the reasons
> against this implementation technique?

What made you think that this technique isn't used?

It is used in GHC. However, there are cases where it can't be used, most
notably with polymorphic recursion, existential types or higher-rank
polymorphism.

Best regards
Tomasz

-- 
I am searching for a programmer who is good at least in some of
[Haskell, ML, C++, Linux, FreeBSD, math] for work in Warsaw, Poland


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