[Haskell-cafe] Re: Stream processors

[Ben Rudiak-Gould]

Peter Simons wrote:
 >Ben Rudiak-Gould writes:
 > > Must contexts be used in a single-threaded manner? If so,
 > > I would expect this interface:
 >
 > >     start  :: IO ctx
 > >     feed   :: ctx -> Buffer -> IO ()
 > >     commit :: ctx -> IO a
 >
 >'feed' cannot have this signature because it needs to update
 >the context.

Sure it can -- it's just like writeIORef :: IORef a -> a -> IO ().

If the return of writeIORef were IO (IORef a) instead, it would be
confusing: does it return the same IORef or a different one? If a
different one, does the original one remain unchanged? If the same
one, why bother returning it when the caller already had it? That's
what confused me about your proposed interface.

 > > If not, I would expect this interface:
 >
 > >     start  :: ctx
 > >     feed   :: ctx -> Buffer -> IO ctx
 > >     commit :: ctx -> a
 >
 >Both 'start' and 'commit' need to be in the IO monad,
 >because creating and finalizing the context may involve IO
 >calls. (Just think of a computation that does internal
 >buffering in memory which is accessed through another Ptr.)

In this interface contexts are supposed to be immutable Haskell
values, so there's no meaning in creating new ones or finalizing
old ones. The initial empty context is just a value, and the
final MD5 hash (or whatever) is a pure function of the final
context.

Yes, this would likely involve internal use of unsafePerformIO
in the implementation, but that's what it's there for (a required
part of the FFI). Dealing with reuse of state might also make the
library too inefficient in practice, which would be a bigger
problem.

 > >     feedBuffer   :: ctx -> Buffer               -> IO ctx
 > >     feedSTUArray :: ctx -> STUArray s Int Word8 -> ST s ctx
 > >     feedUArray   :: ctx -> UArray Int Word8     -> ctx
 >
 >I would implement feedSTUArray and friends as wrappers
 >around the Ptr interface, not as primitive computations of
 >the stream processor.

I think it's impossible to do this safely, but it would be
great if I were wrong.

-- Ben