The Universe of Disco

Higher-Order Perl: nonmemoizing streams
The first version of tail() in the streams chapter looks like this:

        sub tail {
          my $s = shift;
          if (is_promise($s->[1])) {
            return $s->[1]->();  # Force promise
          } else {
            return $s->[1];
          }
        }

        sub tail {
          my $s = shift;
          if (is_promise($s->[1])) {
            $s->[1] = $s->[1]->();  # Force and save promise
          }
          return $s->[1];
        }

There are much stronger reasons for the memoizing version, also much easier to explain.

Why use streams at all instead of the iterators of chapter 4? The most important reason, which I omitted from the book, is that the streams are rewindable. With the chapter 4 iterators, once the data comes out, there is no easy way to get it back in. For example, suppose we want to process the next bit of data from the stream if there is a carrot coming up soon, and a different way if not. Consider:

        # Chapter 4 iterators
        my $data = $iterator->();
        if (carrot_coming_soon($iterator)) {
          # X 
        } else {
          # Y
        }

        sub carrot_coming_soon {
          my $it = shift;
          my $soon = shift || 3;
          while ($soon-- > 0) {
            my $next = $it->();
            return 1 if is_carrot($next);
          }
          return;   # No carrot
        }

One can build a rewindable iterator:

        sub make_rewindable {
          my $it = shift;
          my @saved;  # upcoming values in LIFO order
          return sub {
            my $action = shift || "next";
            if ($action eq "put back") {
              push @saved, @_;
            } elsif ($action eq "next") {
              if (@saved) { return pop @saved; }
              else { return $it->(); }
            }
          };
        }

        sub carrot_coming_soon {
          my $it = shift;
          my $soon = shift || 3;
          my @saved;
          my $saw_carrot;
          while ($soon-- > 0) {
            push @saved, $it->();
            $saw_carrot = 1, last if is_carrot($saved[-1]);
          }
          $it->("put back", @saved);
          return $saw_carrot;
        }

With the streams, it's all much easier:

        sub carrot_coming_soon {
          my $s = shift;
          my $soon = shift || 3;
          while ($seen-- > 0) {
            return 1 if is_carrot($s->head);
            drop($s);
          }
          return;
        }

But this version of carrot_coming_soon() only works for memoizing streams, or for streams whose promise functions are pure. Let's consider a counterexample:

        my $bad = filehandle_stream(\*DATA);

        sub filehandle_stream {
          my $fh = shift;
          return node(scalar <$fh>, 
                      promise { filehandle_stream($fh) });
        }

        __DATA__
        fish
        dog
        carrot
        goat rectum

        $carrot_soon = carrot_coming_soon($bad);
        print "A carrot appears soon after item ", head($bad), "\n"
          if $carrot_soon;

        print "After ", head($bad), " is ", head(tail($bad)), "\n";

I wish I had explained the rewinding property of the streams in the book. It's one of the most significant omissions I know about. And I wish I'd appreciated sooner that the rewinding property only works if the tail() function autosaves the tail node returned from the promise.

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