Ptr and ForeignPtr Questions

Ashley Yakeley ashley@semantic.org
Thu, 20 Sep 2001 02:38:11 -0700


At 2001-09-20 02:14, Simon Marlow wrote:

>I'll just add that the docs have been updated for 5.02,

Do you have a URL for that?

>And don't forget that using foreignPtrToPtr is quite dangerous; much
>better to use withForeignPtr instead, otherwise you might find the
>ForeignPtr being finalised earlier than you expect.

This is because foreignPtrToPtr is not in the IO monad, correct?

     foreignPtrToPtr :: ForeignPtr a -> Ptr a;

A function like this:

     ioForeignPtrToPtr :: ForeignPtr a -> IO (Ptr a);
     ioForeignPtrToPtr fp = withForeignPtr fp return;

...would surely be safe? The 5.00 documentation claims that it isn't, 
however, but I don't see why.

-- 
Ashley Yakeley, Seattle WA