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I'm trying to understand how recursive set operate internally by comparing similar feature in another functional programming languages and concepts.

I can find it in wiki. In that, I need to know Y combinator, fixed point. I can get it briefly in wiki.

Then, now I start to apply this in Haskell.

Haskell

It is easy. But I want to know behind the scenes.

*Main> let x = y; y = 10; in x
10
varvir
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  • You want to use a variable before you assign a value to it? – Shawn Dec 05 '20 at 04:29
  • @Shawn Yes. In [nix set](https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/#idm140737321978160), if there is no `rec`, It doesn't know the variable that will be assigned later. – varvir Dec 05 '20 at 04:33
  • I'm pretty sure you can't do that in ocaml. – Shawn Dec 05 '20 at 04:36
  • @Shawn Because of [eager eval](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eager_evaluation)? like Java, C++, Python? – varvir Dec 05 '20 at 04:39
  • When you say "I'm trying to understand how recursive set operate in functional (not just scope check).", I don't understand what you mean. Do you mean 'operate functionally' or 'operate in functional languages'? And how do you mean 'operate'; as in 'how can I use' or 'what are the operational semantics' or 'how does it operate internally'? – Robert Hensing Dec 05 '20 at 11:11
  • @RobertHensing I mean 'operate in functional languages' so I tried to understand the recursive set by Haskell. I mean 'operate' as 'how does it operate internally'. I want to know how recursive set know lexical scope though nix lang isn't imperative language. – varvir Dec 05 '20 at 13:43

2 Answers2

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When you write a = f b in a lazy functional language like Haskell or Nix, the meaning is stronger than just assignment. a and f b will be the same thing. This is usually called a binding.

I'll focus on a Nix example, because you're asking about recursive sets specifically.

A simple attribute set

Let's look at the initialization of an attribute set first. When the Nix interpreter is asked to evaluate this file

{ a = 1 + 1; b = true; }

it parses it and returns a data structure like this

{ a = <thunk 1>; b = <thunk 2>; }

where a thunk is a reference to the relevant syntax tree node and a reference to the "environment", which behaves like a dictionary from identifiers to their values, although implemented more efficiently.

Perhaps the reason we're evaluating this file is because you requested nix-build, which will not just ask for the value of a file, but also traverse the attribute set when it sees that it is one. So nix-build will ask for the value of a, which will be computed from its thunk. When the computation is complete, the memory that held the thunk is assigned the actual value, type = tInt, value.integer = 2.

A recursive attribute set

Nix has a special syntax that combines the functionality of attribute set construction syntax ({ }) and let-binding syntax. This is avoids some repetition when you're constructing attribute sets with some shared values.

For example

let b = 1 + 1;
in { b = b; a = b + 5; }

can be expressed as

rec { b = 1 + 1; a = b + 5; }

Evaluation works in a similar manner.

At first the evaluator returns a representation of the attribute set with all thunks, but this time the thunks reference an new environment that includes all the attributes, on top of the existing lexical scope.

Note that all these representations can be constructed while performing a minimal amount of work.

nix-build traverses attrsets in alphabetic order, so it will evaluate a first. It's a thunk that references the a + syntax node and an environment with b in it. Evaluating this requires evaluating the b syntax node (an ExprVar), which references the environment, where we find the 1 + 1 thunk, which is changed to a tInt of 2 as before.

As you can see, this process of creating thunks but only evaluating them when needed is indeed lazy and allows us to have various language constructs with their own scoping rules.

Haskell implementations usually follow a similar pattern, but may compile the code rather than interpret a syntax tree, and resolve all variable references to constant memory offsets completely. Nix tries to do this to some degree, but it must be able to fall back on strings because of the inadvisable with keyword that makes the scope dynamic.

Robert Hensing
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I guess several things by myself.

  • In eagar evaluation language, I must declare before use it. So the order of declaration is simple.
int x = 10;
int y = x;
  • Just for Nix language

In wiki, there isn't any concept comparision with Haskell though let ... in is compared with Haskell.

  • lexical scope

all variables are lexically scoped.

  • mutual recursion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_expression#Mutually_recursive_let_expression

varvir
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