> It would be nice if future Haskell implementations were able to display
> function values in some standard form. In particular, closures might
> be represented as local definitions binding free variables in a
> final function value representation.
I'm not so sure that this would be very nice.
One problem that you didn't allude to is that the standard
denotational semantics of the language (in which expressions have
values in the domain E = E -> E + B) would no longer be provably
congruent to the operational semantics.
Of course if someone is prepared to produce a fully abstract
denotational semantics for Haskell, then I withdraw my objection
forthwith ....
... on the otherhand, it is undeniable that it would, on occasions,
be a useful debugging technique.
---
David Lester, Informationsbehandling, Chalmers TH, 412-96 Goteborg, Sweden.
[but usually: CS Department, Manchester University, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.]
