(* A couple abbreviations. *) type 'a thunk = 'a Lazy.t let force = Lazy.force (* The definition of (finite or infinite) lazy lists. *) type 'a stream = 'a head thunk and 'a head = | Nil | Cons of 'a * 'a stream (* Calling [tail xs] demands the head of the stream, that is, forces the computation of the first element of the stream (if there is one). *) let tail xs = match force xs with | Nil -> assert false | Cons (_, xs) -> xs (* Newton-Raphson approximation, following Hughes, "Why functional programming matters", 1990. *) let next n x = (x +. n /. x) /. 2. (* An infinite stream obtained by iterating [f]. *) (* The following definition, copied almost literally from Hughes' paper, is correct but somewhat unsatisfactory; can you see why? Can you fix it? Think about it before reading the solution below. *) let rec repeat (f : 'a -> 'a) (a : 'a) : 'a stream = lazy (Cons (a, repeat f (f a))) (* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *) (* In the above definition of [repeat], the function call [f a] takes place when the *first* element of the list is demanded by the consumer. That's too early -- ideally, this function call should take place only when the *second* element is demanded, since the result of [f a] is the second element in the infinite stream [a], [f a], [f (f a)], ... *) (* This code exhibits the problem: *) let () = let x = ref 0 in let f () = incr x; () in let xs = repeat f () in let xs = tail xs in (* This assertion fails because [x] has been incremented once: *) assert (!x = 0); ignore xs (* This can be fixed in several ways. One solution is to let [repeat] take an argument of type ['a thunk] instead of ['a]. This approach is in fact the standard encoding of call-by-need into call-by-value, applied to Hughes' code. *) let rec repeat (f : 'a -> 'a) (a : 'a thunk) : 'a stream = lazy ( Cons ( force a, repeat f (lazy (f (force a))) ) ) (* It can also be written as follows. *) let rec repeat (f : 'a -> 'a) (a : 'a thunk) : 'a stream = lazy ( let a = force a in Cons ( a, repeat f (lazy (f a)) ) ) (* We define a wrapper so [repeat] has the desired type again: *) let repeat (f : 'a -> 'a) (a : 'a) : 'a stream = repeat f (lazy a) (* The problematic code now behaves as desired: *) let () = let x = ref 0 in let f () = incr x; () in let xs = repeat f () in (* These assertions succeed: *) let xs = tail xs in assert (!x = 0); let xs = tail xs in assert (!x = 1); let xs = tail xs in assert (!x = 2); ignore xs (* Back to Newton-Rapshon. *) let rec within (eps : float) (xs : float stream) : float = match force xs with | Nil -> assert false | Cons (a, xs) -> match force xs with | Nil -> assert false | Cons (b, _) -> if abs_float (a /. b -. 1.) <= eps then b else within eps xs let sqrt (n : float) : float = within 0.0001 (repeat (next n) n) let sqrt2 = sqrt 2.