[clean-list] lazy list as strict argument

[clean-list.mail.zooloo at xoxy.net]

Hi all, 

meanwhile I have calmed down a little. My recent "rant" (see *) was not 
meant to offend anyone but to point out what I recognize  as an outstanding 
need, if learning Clean shall be at least as enjoyable as learning any 
other decent language: the need for comprehensive, reliable, up-to-date 
documentation and educational writings, favorably in the www. 

Just an idea: has anyone ever considered to run a Clean Wiki?


Anyway, while dealing with the underlying laws of uniqueness propagation, 
I recognize that I still don't know everything I should about strictness yet. 

The following problem I find particularly puzzling. 


Why does this little program terminate? 

Start = g [0..]
g :: ![Int] -> Int
g a = a!!5

I do not understand what the strictness annotation actually does here to 
the argument of g. From what I have read, I'd expect it to require the 
infinite list to be reduced to SRNF before g is applied (i. e. the 6th element 
should never be extracted). What does it mean to "fully evaluate" a _lazy_ list? 
If nothing but the first few elements are evaluated, doesn't the graph 
representing the list still contain a redex in the tail? 




I'd be grateful for any hints.


Regards, 

zooloo


----
(*) (I know that the CLR still is subtitled "draft", which explains some 
of my difficulties. From what I listed, I've set aside items no. (1) to (3) 
(they might be just mistakes and/or somewhat misleading wording?), but 
(4) remains unsolved, and is related to more fundamental troubles of mine 
with the evaluation and uniqueness propagation behaviour of comprehensions. 

It would help a lot if I knew how a comprehension internally translates to 
"core" functions. The "de-sugared" version of enumerations I could figure 
out from _SystemEnum, but not so with the various array or list comprehension 
or update constructs.)




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Content preview:  Hi all, meanwhile I have calmed down a little. My
  recent "rant" (see *) was not meant to offend anyone but to point out
  what I recognize as an outstanding need, if learning Clean shall be at
  least as enjoyable as learning any other decent language: the need for
  comprehensive, reliable, up-to-date documentation and educational
  writings, favorably in the www. [...] 

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