haskellcompiler-errorsfunctional-programmingghci

Unresponsive ghci terminal

I read variables are immutable in haskell and something like the following does not work in haskell.

x = 30
x = x+1

But I still tried this to see what the compiler returns and I got the following :

Scrrenshot of my terminal.

The compiler just becomes unresponsive and does not do anything untill I press ctrl+c and interupt it.

Why does this happen and why the compiler becomes unresponsive instead of returning me some kind of an error?

Solution

  • Definitions in Haskell can be recursive, even definitions of values. When you write:

    x = x + 1

    That similar to writing this in Python:

    def x(): return x() + 1

    When you try to evaluate x, your program gets stuck in an infinite loop.