The Revenge of Finalizers
ger at tzi.de
Thu Oct 17 10:07:22 EDT 2002
Simon Marlow wrote:
> > > I don't know how to achieve the same goal with
> > > atomicModifyIORef.
> > I do. To modify ioRef1 and ioRef2 "simultaneously", write
> > atomicModifyIORef ioRef1 (\ contents1 -> unsafePerformIO
> > ioRef2 (\ contents2 -> blah blah))
> > The actual modification will take place when the result or
> > contents of ioRef1 or ioRef2 get evaluated.
> I don't understand how this works. Unless I'm missing something, you'll
> see the contents of ioRef1 at the point at which the first
> atomicModifyIORef takes place, but the contents of ioRef2 from the time
> at which the unsafePerformIO is evaluated, which is some unspecified
> time later.
Perhaps we're talking about different sorts of atomicModifyIORef? I am now
thinking of atomicModifyIORef as having the type
IORef a -> (a -> (a,b)) -> IO b
Thus when it is called the effect is to construct (1) a thunk of type (a,b) containing
the application of the function to the thunk previously in the IORef; (2) a thunk containing
fst $ the thunk from (1) of type (a,b), which is put in the IORef; (3) a thunk
containing snd $ the thunk from (1), to be returned. Subsequent evaluation of the result of
atomicModifyIORef will force the thunks in (1) and (3) to be evaluated, meaning the
unsafePerformIO gets evaluated.
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