Dealing with configuration data

[Jorge Adriano]

> Evening,
>
> I'm trying to write a utility that reads in some user preferences from
> a pre-determined file, does some work, and exits. Sounds simple enough.
>
> The problem I'm having is with the preferences: How do I make it
> available throughout the entire program? (FWIW, most of the work is
> effectively done inside the IO monad.) I could explicitly pass the
> record around everywhere, but that seems a trifle inelegant.
>
> My current solution is to use a global ('scuse my terminology, I'm not
> sure that's the right word to use here) variable of type IORef Config
> obtained through unsafePerformIO. It works, but strikes me as a rather
> barbaric solution to a seemingly tame enough problem...
>
> Intuition tells me I should be able to `embed', if you will, the config
> record somehow within or alongside the IO state, and retrieve it at
> will. (Is this what MonadState is for?) However it also tells me that
> this will /probably/ involve lots of needless lifting and rewriting of
> the existing code, which makes it even less enticing than passing
> everything around explicitly.

This is how I usually do it:
http://www.mail-archive.com/haskell@haskell.org/msg10565.html
(ignore the last part of the post...)

J.A.