Re: [Caml-list] log function without evaluate arguments

[Brian Hurt <bhurt@janestcapital.com>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 948 bytes --]

Till Varoquaux wrote:

>Actually it doesn't:
>
>   log (lazy (Printf.printf "%s" (awfully_long_computation ())))
>
>when log_val is false (or sylvain's solution, which I prefer), will
>not behave like
>
>   Printf.ifprinf "%s" (awfully_long_computation ())
>
>(it won't evaluate its arguments).
>
>Till
>  
>
IMHO: evaluating the arguments of your log statement will avoid some 
really ugly heisenbugs- what if awfully_long_computation performs I/O or 
otherwise has side effects?.  Note that having side-effects in your 
arguments to the log statements is a really bad idea, but people will do 
it, and finding where they do it is non-trivial.

Also, creating a lazy thunk in Ocaml is expensive (like 140+ clock 
cycles), while passing an argument into a function is cheap- and the 
common case will be that the argument won't need to be evaluated, just 
passed in.

Translation: don't try to be too clever to avoid evaluating arguments.

Brian



[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1334 bytes --]