[Haskell-cafe] Ord (IORef a)?

[Tom Pledger]

John Meacham wrote:

>would it be possible to provide an Ord instance for (IORef a)? For
>things like loop detection, one may need to make many IORef comparasions
>and being able to use an efficient set would be a really big win.
>
>Since IORefs are created in the IO monad, the actual order can be
>arbitrary without breaking referential transparency (as long as it
>doesn't change over the lifetime of the IORef.)
>        John
>

Someone posted an 'inside out' solution to this a while ago, but I'm 
having trouble finding it in the mail archives.

It was along these lines:

    type CollectionOfIoRef = Int
    newtype IoRef a = IoRef (IORef (a, Array CollectionOfIoRef Bool))

You use this wrapper, IoRef, instead of IORef. To insert a reference 
into a collection, you add the *collection* to the IoRef's hidden set.

Regards,
Tom