[Haskell-cafe] Re: How do I get this done in constant mem?

[Ben Franksen]

mf-hcafe-15c311f0c at etc-network.de wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 11:11:24PM +0200, Daniel Fischer wrote:
>> No, readFile reads the file lazily.
> 
> hm?  oh, you are right, now that i fixed all the other problems in my
> code readFile isn't a problem any more either...  (-:
> 
> (but then how does it know when to close the handle?  gotta go read
> the code i guess.)

It is somewhat documented, see
http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/base/System-IO.html
or http://www.haskell.org/onlinelibrary/io.html, section 21.2.2 Semi-Closed
Handles:

"[...] A semi-closed handle becomes closed:
 * if hClose is applied to it; 
 * if an I/O error occurs when reading an item from the handle; 
 * or once the entire contents of the handle has been read."

It is not stated here that the file /immediately/ gets closed after the last
byte has been read. Does that mean implementations are free to postpone
closing (e.g. until the next GC cycle)?

Cheers
Ben