[Haskell-cafe] Writing binary files?

[David Menendez]

Glynn Clements writes:

> 
> David Menendez wrote:
> 
> > > I'd like to see the following:
> > > 
> > > - Duplicate the IO library.  The duplicate should work with [Byte]
> > >   everywhere where the old library uses String.  Byte is some 
> > >   suitable unsigned integer, on most (all?) platforms this will be
> > >   Word8
> > > 
> > > - Provide an explicit conversion between encodings.  A simple
> > >   conversion of type [Word8] -> String would suit me, iconv would
> > >   provide all that is needed.
> > 
> > I like this idea, but I say there should be a bit-oriented layer
> > beneath everything.
> 
> The byte stream is inherent, as that's (usually) what the OS gives
> you. Everything else is synthesised.

I was unclear. I meant the bit layer would be beneath everything
conceptually. On today's machines, it would be implemented in terms of a
byte stream and the "conversion" to the byte stream type would get
compiled away.
-- 
David Menendez <zednenem at psualum.com> <http://www.eyrie.org/~zednenem/>