Comment 1 for bug 892922

Proposals:
1. A simple "io" annotation feature on functions. Functions are required to use the "io" annotation in order to call another io function. For example, "def io <name>".

This has a major problem with higher-order functions. If you are allowed to turn an io function into a first-class function object, does it lose its annotation? If so, only io functions could call function objects (unacceptable). If not, the io annotation needs to be part of the type system. Thus this proposal would lead to a complication in the type system where there is a new function type constructor, "->io". For example, if you turned put_char into a first-class function, its type would be Int ->io Int. As a consequence, it wouldn't be usable in map (which is desirable). As a consequence, it may be necessary to have a way to convert a -> b to a ->io b (or maybe not).

2. A monad, like Haskell. We can special-case IO so there is no need for a monad class. This would mean introducing a new type IO :: * -> *. A function which does IO would be put_char :: Int -> IO(Int). The problem is that we don't want to have to use bind or introduce a new "do" notation (which is incompatible with our existing sequencing) to make it work. We want this code to be valid:

def print_string(str :: Array(Int)) :: IO(Int):
    var i :: Int
    i = 0
    while lt(i, array_length(str)):
        put_char(array_ref(str, i))! # Does IO
        i = add(i, 1)
    return 0

Note the new syntax when calling an IO procedure. We can just use IO as a type-system indicator rather than treating it as a first-class value as Haskell does. Special rule: Calling a function that returns IO requires the use of the ! (it is not possible to, say, assign an IO(Int) to a variable). The ! is not allowed unless the current function's return type is IO. Special rule: An IO type is not convertible to a type variable (so Int -> IO(Int) cannot be cast to a -> b).

I feel this has too many special cases, and monadic IO is best left to lazy languages (which can actually represent IO(a) as a first-class value without executing the IO actions).

3. A World type which must be explicitly threaded in and out of every io function. This is verbose, but that's acceptable. The problem is that it requires uniqueness guarantees. Mars is getting a uniqueness system, but that isn't ready yet and there are no details yet on whether it will be possible to require a unique variable (currently it is just an optimisation).

As troublesome as it sounds, #1 seems to be the simplest. It is effectively the monad approach, but with io as a special keyword rather than a type (and therefore not having to add lots of special cases to the type system).