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<a href="./Home">MLton 20130715</a>
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<h1>Lazy</h1>
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<div class="paragraph"><p>In a lazy (or non-strict) language, the arguments to a function are
not evaluated before calling the function.  Instead, the arguments are
suspended and only evaluated by the function if needed.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><a href="StandardML">Standard ML</a> is an eager (or strict) language, not a lazy
language.  However, it is easy to delay evaluation of an expression in
SML by creating a <em>thunk</em>, which is a nullary function.  In SML, a
thunk is written <span class="monospaced">fn () =&gt; e</span>.  Another essential feature of laziness
is <em>memoization</em>, meaning that once a suspended argument is evaluated,
subsequent references look up the value.  We can express this in SML
with a function that maps a thunk to a memoized thunk.</p></div>
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<div class="content"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="kr">signature</span> <span class="nn">LAZY</span> <span class="p">=</span>
   <span class="kr">sig</span>
      <span class="kr">val</span> <span class="nv">lazy</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">unit</span> <span class="p">-&gt;</span> <span class="nd">&#39;a</span><span class="p">)</span> <span class="p">-&gt;</span> <span class="n">unit</span> <span class="p">-&gt;</span> <span class="nd">&#39;a</span>
   <span class="kr">end</span>
</pre></div></div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>This is easy to implement in SML.</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="kr">structure</span> <span class="nn">Lazy</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="n">LAZY</span> <span class="p">=</span>
   <span class="kr">struct</span>
      <span class="kr">fun</span> <span class="nf">lazy</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">th</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="n">unit</span> <span class="p">-&gt;</span> <span class="nd">&#39;a</span><span class="p">):</span> <span class="n">unit</span> <span class="p">-&gt;</span> <span class="nd">&#39;a</span> <span class="p">=</span>
         <span class="kr">let</span>
            <span class="kr">val</span> <span class="nv">r</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="nd">&#39;a</span> <span class="n">option</span> <span class="n">ref</span> <span class="p">=</span> <span class="n">ref</span> <span class="n">NONE</span>
         <span class="kr">in</span>
            <span class="kr">fn</span> <span class="p">()</span> <span class="p">=&gt;</span>
            <span class="kr">case</span> <span class="n">!r</span> <span class="kr">of</span>
               <span class="n">NONE</span> <span class="p">=&gt;</span>
                  <span class="kr">let</span>
                     <span class="kr">val</span> <span class="nv">a</span> <span class="p">=</span> <span class="n">th</span> <span class="p">()</span>
                     <span class="kr">val</span> <span class="p">()</span> <span class="nv">=</span> <span class="n">r</span> <span class="n">:=</span> <span class="n">SOME</span> <span class="n">a</span>
                  <span class="kr">in</span>
                     <span class="n">a</span>
                  <span class="kr">end</span>
             <span class="n">|</span> <span class="n">SOME</span> <span class="n">a</span> <span class="p">=&gt;</span> <span class="n">a</span>
         <span class="kr">end</span>
   <span class="kr">end</span>
</pre></div></div></div>
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