I'm not sure that distinction matters. Any C compiler worth using will optimize out 'x' in that case. The details of why (laziness vs code analysis saying it'

I'm not sure that distinction matters. Any C compiler worth using will optimize out 'x' in that case. The details of why (laziness vs code analysis saying it's unused) is pretty much irrelevant. Saying "the human writing the C compiler" is an odd way to put it. It's "the human writing the Haskell compiler" deciding it shouldn't be evaluated in Haskell, too. Totally meaningless distinction.