[Haskell-cafe] Opening the same file multiple times

[Donn Cave]

On Mon, 12 Dec 2005, Duncan Coutts wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-12-12 at 09:52 -0800, Donn Cave wrote:
> 
> > Of course there's a risk that the authors of ghc may notice that
> > we're doing this and come up with a way to thwart it, but it seems
> > to me that between interfering with legitimate applications and not
> > working reliably anyway, there'd be a case for letting go of this
> > notion altogether.
> 
> Except that it is specified to work this way in the Haskell Report.
> 
> Instead of changing the semantics of the standard libraries what you
> want is a back door to allow the alternative semantics that you want.
> Even better would be to provide a supported api for opening files
> without locking.

Actually I think I would prefer that the semantics change.  A
work-around would be good, and its existence would help publicize
the problem with openFile, but changing openFile would be better
for everyone, I suspect.  (Apparently it may have been so specified
in Haskell 98, up to April 2001?)

	Donn Cave, donn at drizzle.com