Derek Elkins wrote:
On Thu, 2007-08-30 at 18:17 +0200, Peter Hercek wrote:
Hi,
I find the feature that the construct "let x = f x in expr"
assigns fixed point of f to x annoying. The reason is that
I can not simply chain mofifications a variable like e.g. this:
f x =
let x = x * scale in
let x = x + transform in
g x
The common answer is that such code is considered ugly in most
circumstances. Nevertheless, one solution would be to use the Identity
monad and write that as,
f x = runIdentity $ do
x <- x*scale
x <- x + transform
return (g x)
This is nice but more complicated. The goal should be to have it
as simple as possible.
Haskell is lazy, we can have (mutually) recursive values. The canonical
example,
fibs = 0:1:zipWith (+) fibs (tail fibs)
Slightly more interesting,
karplusStrong = y
where y = map (\x -> 1-2*x) (take 50 (randoms (mkStdGen 1)))
++ zipWith (\x y -> (x+y)/2) y (tail y)
This is very nice argument! Thanks. I actually used it myself, but did
not realize it when I was looking for the pro/contra arguments. This
with the fact that it is not that good style to use the same name for
intermediate results might be worth it.
However, the real point is that you shouldn't be naming and renaming the
"same" thing. Going back to your original example, it would be nicer to
most to write it as,
f = g . transform displacement . scale factor
or pointfully
f x = g (transform displacement (scale factor x))
with the appropriate combinators.
Essentially the same idea as the one from Brent Yorgey.
Works fine till the operations can fill easily on one line. Then it does not
scale that well since when it needs to be on more lines it interferes with
automatic insertion of curly braces and semicolons by the layout rules (which
are influenced by the context). Of course when there are more transformations
it makes sense to name the intermediate results differently, but even few
transformations may not fit easily when identifier names are long.
Thanks,
Peter.
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