[Haskell-cafe] Re: (flawed?) benchmark : sort
ajb at spamcop.net
ajb at spamcop.net
Thu Mar 13 20:29:06 EDT 2008
Quoting Adrian Hey <ahey at iee.org>:
> If that's supposed it imply you think I'm in a minority of one I
> don't think you've been following this thread very well.
Sorry, that was a bit of hyperbole.
> Even the report uses the word "equality" in the prose.
Indeed, and the only sensible meaning of "equality" that I can
think of is _semantic_ equality. Two values are semantically equal
if they mean the same thing.
A concrete example of a quotient type that I had in mind is rationals.
A rational is implemented as, for the sake of argument, a pair of
integers. Two rational numbers, a/b and c/d, are equal iff ad = bc.
That's what everyone means by equality for rationals.
It's true that rationals have a normal form, and this can be
enforced by a smart constructor and an unbreakable abstraction. But
if you've got an unbreakable abstraction, then you've also got the
mechanism to enforce observational equality.
Moreover, not all quotient types have a "one true" normal form (e.g.
regular expressions), and even in cases where there is a sensible
normal form, it might be undesirable for reasons of performance or
> Besides there are good pragmatic safety and performance reasons
> why Haskell should provide at least one class that offers
> strong guarantees regarding equality and the (==) operator.
Well, I haven't heard any reasons that have convinced me yet. No
arguing over taste, of course.
> ..and has almost certainly been implicitly assumed by heaven knows
> what extant code (some of it in the standard libraries I suspect).
Nobody has yet gone to the trouble of consulting either heaven or the
source code (in whatever order is deemed appropriate) to see if this
claim is true.
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