At 8:08 PM 9/3/97, Patrick Logan wrote:
>I am stretching my imperative brain cells to comprehend(!) monads, and
>now their relationship to linear ("unique" in Clean) objects. I have
>glanced at Philip Wadler's paper, but the semantics are impenetrable
>to me at this point, and I am looking at the issue from a more
>"practical" point of view ("practical" in the sense of "practice",
>"practitioner", not that theory is impractical!).
>
>My impression is that monads and linear objects are used in
>essentially the same way. I have explicitly read how linear objects
>allow the compiler to "garbage collect" them at compile time because
>the compiler knows exactly how they are used. I assume the same can be
>done for monads? Is this done in the good Haskell compilers?
It has gone unnoticed by many that an assignment not only assigns a new
value to a variable, but is at the same time a form of static garbage
collection. The programmer implicitely states explicitely that the old
value is no longer of interest. This is were state-monads and
uniqueness-types coincide.
Doaitse Swierstra
>
>In general laymen's terms, what are the performance and expressiveness
>issues in comparing monads with linear objects?
>
>Thanks
>--
>Patrick Logan mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Voice 503-533-3365 Fax 503-629-8556
>Gemstone Systems, Inc http://www.gemstone.com
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