<Chapter id="bugs-and-infelicities">
  <title>Known bugs and infelicities
</title>

<sect1 id="vs-Haskell-defn">
  <title>Haskell&nbsp;98 vs.&nbsp;Glasgow Haskell: language non-compliance
</title>

  <indexterm><primary>GHC vs the Haskell 98 language</primary></indexterm>
  <indexterm><primary>Haskell 98 language vs GHC</primary></indexterm>

  <para>This section lists Glasgow Haskell infelicities in its
  implementation of Haskell&nbsp;98.  See also the &ldquo;when things
  go wrong&rdquo; section (<XRef LinkEnd="wrong">) for information
  about crashes, space leaks, and other undesirable phenomena.</para>

  <para>The limitations here are listed in Haskell Report order
  (roughly).</para>

  <sect2 id="haskell98-divergence">
    <title>Divergence from Haskell&nbsp;98</title>
    
      
    <sect3 id="infelicities-lexical">
      <title>Lexical syntax</title>
      
      <itemizedlist>
	<listitem>
	  <para>The Haskell report specifies that programs may be
	  written using Unicode.  GHC only accepts the ISO-8859-1
	  character set at the moment.</para>
	</listitem>

	<listitem>
	  <para>Certain lexical rules regarding qualified identifiers
	  are slightly different in GHC compared to the Haskell
	  report.  When you have
	  <replaceable>module</replaceable><literal>.</literal><replaceable>reservedop</replaceable>,
	  such as <literal>M.\</literal>, GHC will interpret it as a
	  single qualified operator rather than the two lexemes
	  <literal>M</literal> and <literal>.\</literal>.</para>
	</listitem>

	<listitem>
	  <para>When <option>-fglasgow-exts</option> is on, GHC
	  reserves several keywords beginning with two underscores.
	  This is due to the fact that GHC uses the same lexical
	  analyser for interface file parsing as it does for source
	  file parsing, and these keywords are used in interface
	  files.  Do not use any identifiers beginning with a double
	  underscore in <option>-fglasgow-exts</option> mode.</para>
	</listitem>
      </itemizedlist>
    </sect3>
      
      <sect3 id="infelicities-syntax">
	<title>Context-free syntax</title>
	
      <itemizedlist>
	<listitem>
	  <para>GHC doesn't do fixity resolution in expressions during
	  parsing.  For example, according to the Haskell report, the
	  following expression is legal Haskell:
<programlisting>
    let x = 42 in x == 42 == True</programlisting>
	and parses as:
<programlisting>
    (let x = 42 in x == 42) == True</programlisting>

          because according to the report, the <literal>let</literal>
	  expression <quote>extends as far to the right as
	  possible</quote>.  Since it can't extend past the second
	  equals sign without causing a parse error
	  (<literal>==</literal> is non-fix), the
	  <literal>let</literal>-expression must terminate there.  GHC
	  simply gobbles up the whole expression, parsing like this:
<programlisting>
    (let x = 42 in x == 42 == True)</programlisting>

          The Haskell report is arguably wrong here, but nevertheless
          it's a difference between GHC & Haskell 98.</para>
	</listitem>
      </itemizedlist>
    </sect3>

  <sect3 id="infelicities-exprs-pats">
      <title>Expressions and patterns</title>

      <variablelist>
	<varlistentry>
	  <term>Very long <literal>String</literal> constants:</term>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>May not go through.  If you add a &ldquo;string
            gap&rdquo; every few thousand characters, then the strings
            can be as long as you like.</para>

	    <para>Bear in mind that string gaps and the
            <option>-cpp</option><indexterm><primary><option>-cpp</option>
            </primary></indexterm> option don't mix very well (see
            <xref linkend="c-pre-processor">).</para>
	  </listitem>
	</varlistentry>
      </variablelist>

    </sect3>

    <sect3 id="infelicities-decls">
      <title>Declarations and bindings</title>

      <para>None known.</para>

    </sect3>

    <sect3 id="infelicities-Modules">
      <title>Module system and interface files</title>

      <variablelist>

	<varlistentry>
	  <term> Namespace pollution </term>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>Several modules internal to GHC are visible in the
            standard namespace.  All of these modules begin with
            <literal>Prel</literal>, so the rule is: don't use any
            modules beginning with <literal>Prel</literal> in your
            program, or you may be comprehensively screwed.</para>
	  </listitem>
	</varlistentry>
      </variablelist>

    </sect3>

    <sect3 id="infelicities-numbers">
      <title>Numbers, basic types, and built-in classes</title>

      <variablelist>
	<varlistentry>
	  <term>Multiply-defined array elements&mdash;not checked:</term>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>This code fragment <emphasis>should</emphasis>
	    elicit a fatal error, but it does not:

<programlisting>
main = print (array (1,1) [(1,2), (1,3)])</programlisting>

            </para>
	  </listitem>
	</varlistentry>
      </variablelist>
      
    </sect3>

      <sect3 id="infelicities-Prelude">
	<title>In Prelude support</title>

      <variablelist>
	<varlistentry>
	  <term>The <literal>Char</literal> type</term>
	  <indexterm><primary><literal>Char</literal></primary><secondary>size
	  of</secondary></indexterm>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>The Haskell report says that the
	    <literal>Char</literal> type holds 16 bits.  GHC follows
	    the ISO-10646 standard a little more closely:
	    <literal>maxBound :: Char</literal> in GHC is
	    <literal>0x10FFFF</literal>.</para>
	  </listitem>
	</varlistentry>

	<varlistentry>
	  <term>Arbitrary-sized tuples:</term>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>Tuples are currently limited to size 61.  HOWEVER:
            standard instances for tuples (<literal>Eq</literal>,
            <literal>Ord</literal>, <literal>Bounded</literal>,
            <literal>Ix</literal> <literal>Read</literal>, and
            <literal>Show</literal>) are available
            <emphasis>only</emphasis> up to 5-tuples.</para>

	    <para>This limitation is easily subvertible, so please ask
            if you get stuck on it.</para>
	    </listitem>
	  </varlistentry>
	</variablelist>
    </sect3>
  </sect2>

  <sect2 id="haskell98-undefined">
    <title>GHC's interpretation of undefined behaviour in
    Haskell&nbsp;98</title>

    <para>This section documents GHC's take on various issues that are
    left undefined or implementation specific in Haskell 98.</para>

    <variablelist>
      <varlistentry>
	<term>Sized integral types</term>
	<indexterm><primary><literal>Int</literal></primary><secondary>size of</secondary>
	</indexterm>
	
	<listitem>
	  <para>In GHC the <literal>Int</literal> type follows the
	  size of an address on the host architecture; in other words
	  it holds 32 bits on a 32-bit machine, and 64-bits on a
	  64-bit machine.</para>

	  <para>Arithmetic on <literal>Int</literal> is unchecked for
	  overflow<indexterm><primary>overflow</primary><secondary><literal>Int</literal></secondary>
	    </indexterm>, so all operations on <literal>Int</literal> happen
	  modulo
	  2<superscript><replaceable>n</replaceable></superscript>
	  where <replaceable>n</replaceable> is the size in bits of
	  the <literal>Int</literal> type.</para>

	  <para>The <literal>fromInteger</literal><indexterm><primary><literal>fromInteger</literal></primary>
	    </indexterm>function (and hence
	  also <literal>fromIntegral</literal><indexterm><primary><literal>fromIntegral</literal></primary>
	    </indexterm>) is a special case when
	  converting to <literal>Int</literal>.  The value of
	  <literal>fromIntegral x :: Int</literal> is given by taking
	  the lower <replaceable>n</replaceable> bits of <literal>(abs
	  x)</literal>, multiplied by the sign of <literal>x</literal>
	  (in 2's complement <replaceable>n</replaceable>-bit
	  arithmetic).  This behaviour was chosen so that for example
	  writing <literal>0xffffffff :: Int</literal> preserves the
	  bit-pattern in the resulting <literal>Int</literal>.</para>


	   <para>Negative literals, such as <literal>-3</literal>, are
             specified by (a careful reading of) the Haskell Report as 
             meaning <literal>Prelude.negate (Prelude.fromInteger 3)</literal>.
	     So <literal>-2147483648</literal> means <literal>negate (fromInteger 2147483648)</literal>.
	     Since <literal>fromInteger</literal> takes the lower 32 bits of the representation,
	     <literal>fromInteger (2147483648::Integer)</literal>, computed at type <literal>Int</literal> is
	     <literal>-2147483648::Int</literal>.  The <literal>negate</literal> operation then
	     overflows, but it is unchecked, so <literal>negate (-2147483648::Int)</literal> is just
	     <literal>-2147483648</literal>.  In short, one can write <literal>minBound::Int</literal> as
	     a literal with the expected meaning (but that is not in general guaranteed.
             </para>

	  <para>The <literal>fromIntegral</literal> function also
	  preserves bit-patterns when converting between the sized
	  integral types (<literal>Int8</literal>,
	  <literal>Int16</literal>, <literal>Int32</literal>,
	  <literal>Int64</literal> and the unsigned
	  <literal>Word</literal> variants), see the modules
	  <literal>Data.Int</literal> and <literal>Data.Word</literal>
	  in the library documentation.</para>
	</listitem>
      </varlistentry>

      <varlistentry>
	<term>Unchecked float arithmetic</term>
	<listitem>
	  <para>Operations on <literal>Float</literal> and
          <literal>Double</literal> numbers are
          <emphasis>unchecked</emphasis> for overflow, underflow, and
          other sad occurrences.  (note, however that some
          architectures trap floating-point overflow and
          loss-of-precision and report a floating-point exception,
          probably terminating the
          program)<indexterm><primary>floating-point
          exceptions</primary></indexterm>.</para>
	</listitem>
      </varlistentry>
    </variablelist>
      
  </sect2>

</sect1>


<sect1 id="bugs">
  <title>Known bugs or infelicities</title>

<para>GHC has the following known bugs or infelicities:
<itemizedlist>

<listitem><para>
GHC only provides tuples up to size 62, and derived tuple instances (for
Eq, Ord, etc) up to size 15.
</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>
GHC can warn about non-exhaustive or overlapping patterns, and usually does so correctly.
But not always.  It gets confused by string patterns, and by guards, and can then 
emit bogus warnings.  The entire overlap-check code needs an overhaul really.
</para></listitem>



<listitem><para>Dangers with multiple Main modules.</para>

	<para>
	GHC does not insist that module <literal>Main</literal> lives in a file called <filename>Main.hs</filename>.
	This is useful if you want multiple versions of <literal>Main</literal>.  But there's a danger: when
	compiling module  <literal>Main</literal> (regardless of what file it comes from), GHC looks for 
	the interface <filename>Main.hi</filename>; it uses this to get version information from the last
	time it recompiled <literal>Main</literal>.   The trouble is that this  <filename>Main.hi</filename>
	may not correspond to the source file being compiled.
	  </para>
	<para>
	  Solution: remove <filename>Main.hi</filename> first.  A better solution would be for GHC to
	    record the source-file filename in the interface file, or even an MD5 checksum.
	    </para>
     </listitem>
    

<listitem><para>
GHCi does not respect the <literal>default</literal> declaration in the module whose
scope you are in.  Instead, for expressions typed at the command line, you always 
get the default default-type behaviour; that is, <literal>default(Int,Double)</literal>.
</para>
<para>
It would be better for GHCi to record what the default settings in each module are, and
use those of the 'current' module (whatever that is).
</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>
GHCi does not keep careful track of what instance declarations are 'in scope' if they
come from other packages.
Instead, all instance declarations that GHC has seen in other packages are all in scope
everywhere, whether or not the module from that package is used by the command-line expression.
</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>
GHC's inliner can be persuaded into non-termination using the standard way to encode
recursion via a data type:
<programlisting>
  data U = MkU (U -> Bool)
       
  russel :: U -> Bool
  russel u@(MkU p) = not $ p u
  
  x :: Bool
  x = russel (MkU russel)
</programlisting>
We have never found another program, other than this contrived one, that makes GHC
diverge, and fixing the problem would impose an extra overhead on every compilation.  So the
bug remains un-fixed.  There is more background in
<ulink
url="http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/Papers/inlining">
Secrets of the GHC inliner</ulink>.
</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist></para>
</sect1>

</Chapter>

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