Representation of a quadtree string - algorithm

I am given a string in this form ppeeefpffeefe.
Values:
p represents parent node
e represents empty node
f represents a full node
Image that represents this string can be seen here: https://i.stack.imgur.com/GZppc.png
I am writing code in Haskell and trying to convert this representation into 1024 long list of integers where 1 represents the black (full) pixel and 0 represents white (empty) pixel assuming the image size is 32x32 pixels.
This is the code I have but Haskell is giving me trouble. I know that I need to keep track of how many parent nodes I have visited and update highest level that way. I am trying to take DFS approach but anything that will do a job will help.
getQuad :: String -> Int -> Int -> Int -> [Int] -> [Int]
getQuad tree level highestLevel pCount result | (node == 'p') = result ++ (getQuad (drop 1 tree) (level+1) level 0 result)
| (node == 'e') = result ++ (getQuad (drop 1 tree) level highestLevel pCount (result ++ (take (getAmount level) [0,0..])))
| (node == 'f') = result ++ (getQuad (drop 1 tree) level highestLevel pCount (result ++ (take (getAmount level) [1,1..])))
| otherwise = result
where
node = g
getNodeValue :: String -> Char
getNodeValue tree = if (length tree > 0) then tree !! 0 else 'x'
getAmount :: Int -> Int
getAmount l = 1024 `div` (4^l)
Thank you!

I think you're trying to do way too much in a single function. I recommend starting over, and explicitly introducing separate parsing phases (to convert your String to an ADT representing it) and production phases (to convert a value of the ADT to a list of Ints). For example, a suitable ADT might look like this:
data QuadTree = Parent QuadTree QuadTree QuadTree QuadTree
| Empty
| Full
deriving (Eq, Ord, Read, Show)
There are various techniques and libraries for parsing. Given your apparent level of expertise, and the simplicity of the format, I think I might recommend starting by writing the parser by hand and ignoring error-handling. Later you could think about learning about error-handling tools like Maybe or Either and parsing combinator libraries like parsec and friends to make it more flexible to changes in the language.
So, by hand and ignoring error-handling. Here's the skeleton I would put in place and try to fill out. Our parser needs to not just consume a String, but also be able to consume just part of a String and say what's left over: when handling a nested parent node, we need to return to the outer parent the chunk of the string that the inner parent didn't consume. So:
parseQuadTree :: String -> (String, QuadTree)
parseQuadTree ('p':rest) = -- TODO: exercise for the reader
parseQuadTree ('e':rest) = (rest, Empty)
parseQuadTree ('f':rest) = (rest, Full)
parseQuadTree other = error $ "parsing failed, expected a p, e, or f, but got " ++ other ++ " instead"
For example, we might expect the following ghci exchanges once we'd finished this function:
> parseQuadTree "e"
("", Empty)
> parseQuadTree "eef"
("ef", Empty)
> parseQuadTree "peeeeef"
("ef", QuadTree Empty Empty Empty Empty)
Once you have that, then I'd try to cook up a sensible representation of the 2d result. Perhaps a nested list would do:
type Image = [[Int]]
For example, you might interpret each element of the outer list as a row of the image; its elements are the columns of that row. The three basic operations you need for this thing are pasting images side-by-side horizontally and vertically and creating a blank image.
hcat, vcat :: Image -> Image -> Image
hcat = -- TODO: exercise for the reader
vcat = -- TODO: exercise for the reader
blank :: Int -> Int -> Int -> Image
blank w h pixel = -- TODO: exercise for the reader
-- OR, you could take just one size argument; we only ever need
-- square blank images in the following code
For example, you might expect these ghci exchanges once we'd finished implementing them:
> :set +m
> let x = [[0, 1]
| ,[2, 3]
| ]
| y = [[4, 5]
| ,[6, 7]
| ]
|
> hcat x y
[[0,1,4,5],[2,3,6,7]]
> vcat x y
[[0,1],[2,3],[4,5],[6,7]]
> blank 2 3 4
[[4,4],[4,4],[4,4]]
Now you can write a function which converts a QuadTree to an Image. We'll have to know how big the image is supposed to be, so let's make that an argument to the function.
renderQuadTree :: Int -> QuadTree -> Image
renderQuadTree size (Parent nw ne sw se) = -- TODO: exercise for the reader; use hcat and vcat
where subtreeSize = size `div` 2
renderQuadTree size Empty = blank size size 0
renderQuadTree size Full = blank size size 1
For example, we might expect some such exchanges at ghci once this is finished:
> renderQuadTree 2 Empty
[[0,0],[0,0]]
> renderQuadTree 2 Full
[[1,1],[1,1]]
> renderQuadTree 2 (Parent Empty Full Full Empty)
[[0,1],[1,0]]
> renderQuadTree 4 (Parent Empty (Parent Full Empty Empty Full) Empty Full)
[[0,0,1,0],[0,0,0,1],[0,0,1,1],[0,0,1,1]]
Finally we could make a top-level function that combines all these into one convenient piece.
getQuad :: String -> [Int]
getQuad s = case parseQuadTree s of
("", t) -> concat (renderQuadTree 32 t)
(s', _) -> error $ "parser did not consume the entire description string, leftovers are: " ++ s

Related

transferring an imperative for-loop into idiomatic haskell

I have some difficulties to transfer imperative algorithms into a functional style. The main concept that I cannot wrap my head around is how to fill sequences with values according to their position in the sequence. How would an idiomatic solution for the following algorithm look in Haskell?
A = unsigned char[256]
idx <- 1
for(i = 0 to 255)
if (some_condition(i))
A[i] <- idx
idx++
else
A[i] = 0;
The algorithm basically creates a lookup table for the mapping function of a histogram.
Do you know any resources which would help me to understand this kind of problem better?
One of the core ideas in functional programming is to express algorithms as data transformations. In a lazy language like Haskell, we can even go a step further and think of lazy data structures as reified computations. In a very real sense, Haskell's lists are more like loops than normal linked lists: they can be calculated incrementally and don't have to exist in memory all at once. At the same time, we still get many of the advantages of having a data type like that ability to pass it around and inspect it with pattern matching.
With this in mind, the "trick" for expressing a for-loop with an index is to create a list of all the values it can take. Your example is probably the simplest case: i takes all the values from 0 to 255, so we can use Haskell's built-in notation for ranges:
[0..255]
At a high level, this is Haskell's equivalent of for (i = 0 to 255); we can then execute the actual logic in the loop by traversing this list either by a recursive function or a higher-order function from the standard library. (The second option is highly preferred.)
This particular logic is a good fit for a fold. A fold lets us take in a list item by item and build up a result of some sort. At each step, we get a list item and the value of our built-up result so far. In this particular case, we want to process the list from left to right while incrementing an index, so we can use foldl; the one tricky part is that it will produce the list backwards.
Here's the type of foldl:
foldl :: (b -> a -> b) -> b -> [a] -> b
So our function takes in our intermediate value and a list element and produces an updated intermediate value. Since we're constructing a list and keeping track of an index, our intermediate value will be a pair that contains both. Then, once we have the final result, we can ignore the idx value and reverse the final list we get:
a = let (result, _) = foldl step ([], 1) [0..255] in reverse result
where step (a, idx) i
| someCondition i = (idx:a, idx + 1)
| otherwise = (0:a, idx)
In fact, the pattern of transforming a list while keeping track of some intermediate state (idx in this case) is common enough so that it has a function of its own in terms of the State type. The core abstraction is a bit more involved (read through ["You Could Have Invented Monads"][you] for a great introduction), but the resulting code is actually quite pleasant to read (except for the imports, I guess :P):
import Control.Applicative
import Control.Monad
import Control.Monad.State
a = evalState (mapM step [0..255]) 1
where step i
| someCondition i = get <* modify (+ 1)
| otherwise = return 0
The idea is that we map over [0..255] while keeping track of some state (the value of idx) in the background. evalState is how we put all the plumbing together and just get our final result. The step function is applied to each input list element and can also access or modify the state.
The first case of the step function is interesting. The <* operator tells it to do the thing on the left first, the thing on the right second but return the value on the left. This lets us get the current state, increment it but still return the value we got before it was incremented. The fact that our notion of state is a first-class entity and we can have library functions like <* is very powerful—I've found this particular idiom really useful for traversing trees, and other similar idioms have been quite useful for other code.
There are several ways to approach this problem depending on what data structure you want to use. The simplest one would probably be with lists and the basic functions available in Prelude:
a = go 1 [] [0..255]
where
go idx out [] = out
go idx out (i:is) =
if condition i
then go (idx + 1) (out ++ [idx]) is
else go idx (out ++ [0]) is
This uses the worker pattern with two accumulators, idx and out, and it traverses down the last parameter until no more elements are left, then returns out. This could certainly be converted into a fold of some sort, but in any case it won't be very efficient, appending items to a list with ++ is very inefficient. You could make it better by using idx : out and 0 : out, then using reverse on the output of go, but it still isn't an ideal solution.
Another solution might be to use the State monad:
a = flip runState 1 $ forM [0..255] $ \i -> do
idx <- get
if condition i
then do
put $ idx + 1 -- idx++
return idx -- A[i] = idx
else return 0
Which certainly looks a lot more imperative. The 1 in flip runState 1 is indicating that your initial state is idx = 1, then you use forM (which looks like a for loop but really isn't) over [0..255], the loop variable is i, and then it's just a matter of implementing the rest of the logic.
If you want to go a lot more advanced you could use the StateT and ST monads to have an actual mutable array with a state at the same time. The explanation of how this works is far beyond the scope of this answer, though:
import Control.Monad.State
import Control.Monad.ST
import qualified Data.Vector as V
import qualified Data.Vector.Mutable as MV
a :: V.Vector Int
a = runST $ (V.freeze =<<) $ flip evalStateT (1 :: Int) $ do
a' <- lift $ MV.new 256
lift $ MV.set a' 0
forM_ [0..255] $ \i -> do
when (condition i) $ do
idx <- get
lift $ MV.write a' i idx
put $ idx + 1
return a'
I simplified it a bit so that each element is set to 0 from the start, we begin with an initial state of idx = 1, loop over [0..255], if the current index i meets the condition then get the current idx, write it to the current index, then increment idx. Run this as a stateful operation, then freeze the vector, and finally run the ST monad side of things. This allows for an actual mutable vector hidden safely within the ST monad so that the outside world doesn't know that to calculate a you have to do some rather strange things.
Explicit recursion:
a = go 0 1
where go 256 _ = []
go i idx | someCondition i = idx : go (i+1) (idx+1)
| otherwise = 0 : go (i+1) idx
Unfolding: (variant of the explicit recursion above)
a = unfoldr f (0,1)
where f (256,_) = Nothing
f (i,idx) | someCondition i = Just (idx,(i+1,idx+1))
| otherwise = Just (0 ,(i+1,idx ))
Loops can usually be expressed using different fold functions. Here is a solution which uses foldl(you can switch to foldl' if you run into a stackoverflow error):
f :: (Num a) => (b -> Bool) -> a -> [b] -> [a]
f pred startVal = reverse . fst . foldl step ([], startVal)
where
step (xs, curVal) x
| pred x = (curVal:xs, curVal + 1)
| otherwise = (0:xs, curVal)
How to use it? This function takes a predicate (someCondition in your code), the initial value of an index and a list of element to iterate over. That is, you can call f someCondition 1 [0..255] to obtain the result for the example from your question.

Haskell foldl' not saving the space it was expected to

Trying to implement the straightforward dynamic programming algorithm for the Knapsack problem. Obviously this approach uses a lot of memory and so I am trying to optimize the memory utilized. I am simply trying to store only the previous row of my table in memory just long enough to compute the next row, and so on. At first I thought my implementation was solid, but it still ran out of memory as an implementation designed to store the whole table. So next I thought maybe I need foldl' instead of foldr, but it did not make any difference. My program continues to eat memory until my system runs out.
So I have 2 specific questions:
What is it about my code that is using up all the memory? I thought I was being clever by using a fold, because I assumed only the current value of the accumulator would be stored in memory.
What is the proper approach for achieving my goal; that is, storing only the most recent row in memory? I don't necessarily need code, maybe just some helpful functions and data types. More generally, what are some tips and techniques for understanding memory usage in Haskell?
Here is my implementation
data KSItem a = KSItem { ksItem :: a, ksValue :: Int, ksWeight :: Int} deriving (Eq, Show, Ord)
dynapack5 size items = finalR ! size
where
noItems = length items
itemsArr = listArray(1,noItems) items
row = listArray(1,size) (replicate size (0,[]))
computeRow row item =
let w = ksWeight item
v = ksValue item
idx = ksItem item
pivot = let (lastVal, selections) = row ! w
in if v > lastVal
then (v, [idx])
else (lastVal, selections)
figure r c =
if (prevVal + v) > lastVal
then (prevVal + v, prevItems ++ [idx])
else (lastVal, lastItems)
where (lastVal, lastItems) = (r ! c)
(prevVal, prevItems) = (r ! (c - w))
theRest = [ (figure row cw) | cw <- [(w+1)..size] ]
newRow = (map (row!) [1..(w-1)]) ++
[pivot] ++
theRest
in listArray (1,size) newRow
finalR = foldl' computeRow row items
In my head, what I think this is doing is initializing the first row to (0,[])... repeated as necessary, then kicking off the fold where the next row is calculated based on the supplied row, and this value then becomes the accumulator. I'm not seeing where more and more memory is being consumed...
Random thought: what if i used the \\ operator on the accumulator instead?
As Tom Ellis said, using force on the array solves the space issues. However, it is extremely slow, because force traverses all the lists in the array from start to end each time it is invoked. So we should only force as needed:
let res = listArray (1,size) newRow in force (map fst $ elems res) `seq` res
This fixes the space leak and it's also pretty fast.
If you want to take space efficiency to the logical next step, you could use bitsets of the indices of the items instead of lists of items. Integers are good for the job here since they automatically resize themselves to accommodate the highest set bit. Also, with Integer-s forcing is straightforward:
import qualified Data.Vector as V -- using this instead of Array cause I like it more
import Data.List
import Control.Arrow
import Data.Bits
import Control.DeepSeq
data KSItem a = KSItem { ksItem :: a, ksValue :: Int, ksWeight :: Int} deriving (Eq, Show, Ord)
dynapack5' :: Int -> [KSItem a] -> (Int, Integer)
dynapack5' size items = V.last solutions where
items' = [KSItem i v w | (i, KSItem _ v w) <- zip [0..] items]
solutions = foldl' add (V.replicate (size + 1) (0, 0::Integer)) items'
add arr (KSItem item currVal w) = force $ V.imap go arr where
go i (v, is) | w < i && v' > v = (v', is')
| otherwise = (v, is)
where (v', is') = (+currVal) *** (`setBit` item) $ arr V.! (i - w)
Data.Array is non-strict in its elements so even though foldl' forces it to WHNF each time around the loop the contents don't get evaluated. The simplest fix would be to import Control.DeepSeq and change
in listArray (1,size) newRow
to
in force (listArray (1,size) newRow)
This is doing more work than strictly necessary each time around the loop, but will do the job.
Unfortunately you can't just substitute unboxed arrays here, since your arrays contain a tuple containing a list.

The right way to use a data structure in OCaml

Ok, I have written a binary search tree in OCaml.
type 'a bstree =
|Node of 'a * 'a bstree * 'a bstree
|Leaf
let rec insert x = function
|Leaf -> Node (x, Leaf, Leaf)
|Node (y, left, right) as node ->
if x < y then
Node (y, insert x left, right)
else if x > y then
Node (y, left, insert x right)
else
node
I guess the above code does not have problems.
When using it, I write
let root = insert 4 Leaf
let root = insert 5 root
...
Is this the correct way to use/insert to the tree?
I mean, I guess I shouldn't declare the root and every time I again change the variable root's value, right?
If so, how can I always keep a root and can insert a value into the tree at any time?
This looks like good functional code for inserting into a tree. It doesn't mutate the tree during insertion, but instead it creates a new tree containing the value. The basic idea of immutable data is that you don't "keep" things. You calculate values and pass them along to new functions. For example, here's a function that creates a tree from a list:
let tree_of_list l = List.fold_right insert l Leaf
It works by passing the current tree along to each new call to insert.
It's worth learning to think this way, as many of the benefits of FP derive from the use of immutable data. However, OCaml is a mixed-paradigm language. If you want to, you can use a reference (or mutable record field) to "keep" a tree as it changes value, just as in ordinary imperative programming.
Edit:
You might think the following session shows a modification of a variable x:
# let x = 2;;
val x : int = 2
# let x = 3;;
val x : int = 3
#
However, the way to look at this is that these are two different values that happen to both be named x. Because the names are the same, the old value of x is hidden. But if you had another way to access the old value, it would still be there. Maybe the following will show how things work:
# let x = 2;;
val x : int = 2
# let f () = x + 5;;
val f : unit -> int = <fun>
# f ();;
- : int = 7
# let x = 8;;
val x : int = 8
# f ();;
- : int = 7
#
Creating a new thing named x with the value 8 doesn't affect what f does. It's still using the same old x that existed when it was defined.
Edit 2:
Removing a value from a tree immutably is analogous to adding a value. I.e., you don't actually modify an existing tree. You create a new tree without the value that you don't want. Just as inserting doesn't copy the whole tree (it re-uses large parts of the previous tree), so deleting won't copy the whole tree either. Any parts of the tree that aren't changed can be re-used in the new tree.
Edit 3
Here's some code to remove a value from a tree. It uses a helper function that adjoins two trees that are known to be disjoint (furthermore all values in a are less than all values in b):
let rec adjoin a b =
match a, b with
| Leaf, _ -> b
| _, Leaf -> a
| Node (v, al, ar), _ -> Node (v, al, adjoin ar b)
let rec delete x = function
| Leaf -> Leaf
| Node (v, l, r) ->
if x = v then adjoin l r
else if x < v then Node (v, delete x l, r)
else Node (v, l, delete x r)
(Hope I didn't just spoil your homework!)

Any way to create the unmemo-monad?

Suppose someone makes a program to play chess, or solve sudoku. In this kind of program it makes sense to have a tree structure representing game states.
This tree would be very large, "practically infinite". Which isn't by itself a problem as Haskell supports infinite data structures.
An familiar example of an infinite data structure:
fibs = 0 : 1 : zipWith (+) fibs (tail fibs)
Nodes are only allocated when first used, so the list takes finite memory. One may also iterate over an infinite list if they don't keep references to its head, allowing the garbage collector to collect its parts which are not needed anymore.
Back to the tree example - suppose one does some iteration over the tree, the tree nodes iterated over may not be freed if the root of the tree is still needed (for example in an iterative deepening search, the tree would be iterated over several times and so the root needs to be kept).
One possible solution for this problem that I thought of is using an "unmemo-monad".
I'll try to demonstrate what this monad is supposed to do using monadic lists:
import Control.Monad.ListT (ListT) -- cabal install List
import Data.Copointed -- cabal install pointed
import Data.List.Class
import Prelude hiding (enumFromTo)
nums :: ListT Unmemo Int -- What is Unmemo?
nums = enumFromTo 0 1000000
main = print $ div (copoint (foldlL (+) 0 nums)) (copoint (lengthL nums))
Using nums :: [Int], the program would take a lot of memory as a reference to nums is needed by lengthL nums while it is being iterated over foldlL (+) 0 nums.
The purpose of Unmemo is to make the runtime not keep the nodes iterated over.
I attempted using ((->) ()) as Unmemo, but it yields the same results as nums :: [Int] does - the program uses a lot of memory, as evident by running it with +RTS -s.
Is there anyway to implement Unmemo that does what I want?
Same trick as with a stream -- don't capture the remainder directly, but instead capture a value and a function which yields a remainder. You can add memoization on top of this as necessary.
data UTree a = Leaf a | Branch a (a -> [UTree a])
I'm not in the mood to figure it out precisely at the moment, but this structure arises, I'm sure, naturally as the cofree comonad over a fairly straightforward functor.
Edit
Found it: http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/comonad-transformers/1.6.3/doc/html/Control-Comonad-Trans-Stream.html
Or this is perhaps simpler to understand: http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/streams/0.7.2/doc/html/Data-Stream-Branching.html
In either case, the trick is that your f can be chosen to be something like data N s a = N (s -> (s,[a])) for an appropriate s (s being the type of your state parameter of the stream -- the seed of your unfold, if you will). That might not be exactly correct, but something close should do...
But of course for real work, you can scrap all this and just write the datatype directly as above.
Edit 2
The below code illustrates how this can prevent sharing. Note that even in the version without sharing, there are humps in the profile indicating that the sum and length calls aren't running in constant space. I'd imagine that we'd need an explicit strict accumulation to knock those down.
{-# LANGUAGE DeriveFunctor #-}
import Data.Stream.Branching(Stream(..))
import qualified Data.Stream.Branching as S
import Control.Arrow
import Control.Applicative
import Data.List
data UM s a = UM (s -> Maybe a) deriving Functor
type UStream s a = Stream (UM s) a
runUM s (UM f) = f s
liftUM x = UM $ const (Just x)
nullUM = UM $ const Nothing
buildUStream :: Int -> Int -> Stream (UM ()) Int
buildUStream start end = S.unfold (\x -> (x, go x)) start
where go x
| x < end = liftUM (x + 1)
| otherwise = nullUM
sumUS :: Stream (UM ()) Int -> Int
sumUS x = S.head $ S.scanr (\x us -> maybe 0 id (runUM () us) + x) x
lengthUS :: Stream (UM ()) Int -> Int
lengthUS x = S.head $ S.scanr (\x us -> maybe 0 id (runUM () us) + 1) x
sumUS' :: Stream (UM ()) Int -> Int
sumUS' x = last $ usToList $ liftUM $ S.scanl (+) 0 x
lengthUS' :: Stream (UM ()) Int -> Int
lengthUS' x = last $ usToList $ liftUM $ S.scanl (\acc _ -> acc + 1) 0 x
usToList x = unfoldr (\um -> (S.head &&& S.tail) <$> runUM () um) x
maxNum = 1000000
nums = buildUStream 0 maxNum
numsL :: [Int]
numsL = [0..maxNum]
-- All these need to be run with increased stack to avoid an overflow.
-- This generates an hp file with two humps (i.e. the list is not shared)
main = print $ div (fromIntegral $ sumUS' nums) (fromIntegral $ lengthUS' nums)
-- This generates an hp file as above, and uses somewhat less memory, at the cost of
-- an increased number of GCs. -H helps a lot with that.
-- main = print $ div (fromIntegral $ sumUS nums) (fromIntegral $ lengthUS nums)
-- This generates an hp file with one hump (i.e. the list is shared)
-- main = print $ div (fromIntegral $ sum $ numsL) (fromIntegral $ length $ numsL)

variant of pascal's triangle in haskell - problem with lazy evaluation

To solve some problem I need to compute a variant of the pascal's triangle which is defined like this:
f(1,1) = 1,
f(n,k) = f(n-1,k-1) + f(n-1,k) + 1 for 1 <= k < n,
f(n,0) = 0,
f(n,n) = 2*f(n-1,n-1) + 1.
For n given I want to efficiently get the n-th line (f(n,1) .. f(n,n)). One further restriction: f(n,k) should be -1 if it would be >= 2^32.
My implementation:
next :: [Int64] -> [Int64]
next list#(x:_) = x+1 : takeWhile (/= -1) (nextRec list)
nextRec (a:rest#(b:_)) = boundAdd a b : nextRec rest
nextRec [a] = [boundAdd a a]
boundAdd x y
| x < 0 || y < 0 = -1
| x + y + 1 >= limit = -1
| otherwise = (x+y+1)
-- start shoud be [1]
fLine d start = until ((== d) . head) next start
The problem: for very large numbers I get a stack overflow. Is there a way to force haskell to evaluate the whole list? It's clear that each line can't contain more elements than an upper bound, because they eventually become -1 and don't get stored and each line only depends on the previous one. Due to the lazy evaluation only the head of each line is computed until the last line needs it's second element and all the trunks along the way are stored...
I have a very efficient implementation in c++ but I am really wondering if there is a way to get it done in haskell, too.
Works for me: What Haskell implementation are you using? A naive program to calculate this triangle works fine for me in GHC 6.10.4. I can print the 1000th row just fine:
nextRow :: [Integer] -> [Integer]
nextRow row = 0 : [a + b + 1 | (a, b) <- zip row (tail row ++ [last row])]
tri = iterate nextRow [0]
main = putStrLn $ show $ tri !! 1000 -- print 1000th row
I can even print the first 10 numbers in row 100000 without overflowing the stack. I'm not sure what's going wrong for you. The global name tri might be keeping the whole triangle of results alive, but even if it is, that seems relatively harmless.
How to force order of evaluation: You can force thunks to be evaluated in a certain order using the Prelude function seq (which is a magic function that can't be implemented in terms of Haskell's other basic features). If you tell Haskell to print a `seq` b, it first evaluates the thunk for a, then evaluates and prints b.
Note that seq is shallow: it only does enough evaluation to force a to no longer be a thunk. If a is of a tuple type, the result might still be a tuple of thunks. If it's a list, the result might be a cons cell having thunks for both the head and the tail.
It seems like you shouldn't need to do this for such a simple problem; a few thousand thunks shouldn't be too much for any reasonable implementation. But it would go like this:
-- Evaluate a whole list of thunks before calculating `result`.
-- This returns `result`.
seqList :: [b] -> a -> a
seqList lst result = foldr seq result lst
-- Exactly the same as `nextRow`, but compute every element of `row`
-- before calculating any element of the next row.
nextRow' :: [Integer] -> [Integer]
nextRow' row = row `seqList` nextRow row
tri = iterate nextRow' [0]
The fold in seqList basically expands to lst!!0 `seq` lst!!1 `seq` lst!!2 `seq` ... `seq` result.
This is much slower for me when printing just the first 10 elements of row 100,000. I think that's because it requires computing 99,999 complete rows of the triangle.

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