[Haskell-beginners] When to use ByteString rather than [Char] ... ?

[Mukhamed Karanashev]

Hi, James.
Because "String" is represented by the "[Char]", each element of String is
allocated individually. ByteString represents a string in a single array and
hasn't overhead for allocating each char.

I recommend you to read the "Real World Haskell" -
http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/. There is some notes about
String/ByteString in the Chapter 8 -
http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/efficient-file-processing-regular-expressions-and-file-name-matching.html

On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 3:07 PM, James Fisher <jameshfisher at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
> After working through a few Haskell tutorials, I've come across numerous
> recommendations to use the Data.ByteString library rather than standard
> [Char], for reasons of "performance".  I'm having trouble swallowing this --
> presumably the standard String is default for good reasons.  Nothing has
> answered this question: in what case is it better to use [Char]?
>
> Could anyone point me to a good resource showing the differences between
> how [Char] and ByteString are implemented, and giving good a heuristic for
> me to decide which is better in any one case?
>
>
> Best,
>
>
> James Fisher
>
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