Lazy Evaluation - Controlling Eagerness in Lazy Languages

Controlling Eagerness in Lazy Languages

In lazy programming languages such as Haskell, although the default is to evaluate expressions only when they are demanded, it is possible in some cases to make code more eager—or conversely, to make it more lazy again after it has been made more eager. This can be done by explicitly coding something which forces evaluation (which may make the code more eager) or avoiding such code (which may make the code more lazy). Strict evaluation usually implies eagerness, but they are technically different concepts.

However, there is an optimisation implemented in some compilers called strictness analysis, which, in some cases, allows the compiler to infer that a value will always be used. In such cases, this may render the programmer's choice of whether to force that particular value or not, irrelevant, because strictness analysis will force strict evaluation.

In Haskell, marking constructor fields strict means that their values will always be demanded immediately. The seq function can also be used to demand a value immediately and then pass it on, which is useful if a constructor field should generally be lazy. However, neither of these techniques implements recursive strictness—for that, a function called deepSeq was invented.

Also, pattern matching in Haskell 98 is strict by default, so the ~ qualifier has to be used to make it lazy.