[Haskell-cafe] Re: new Haskell hacker seeking peer review

[John Goerzen]

Here's an alternative:

module Main where

import System.IO
import System(getArgs)

catFile :: FilePath -> IO ()
catFile fp = do contents <- readFile fp
                putStr contents

main :: IO ()
main = do hSetBuffering stdin (BlockBuffering Nothing)
          args <- getArgs
          if not (null args)
             then mapM_ catFile args
             else do contents <- getContents
                     putStr contents

This avoids the whole EOF problem by using lazy I/O.  readFile and
getContents both return a String, but it's a lazy list; the contents of
the string are only generated on demand.  So this does not actually read
the entire file into memory as you might think at first glance.

Also, I added a hSetBuffering line.  Setting it to BlockBuffering can
improve performance.  LineBuffering could also be useful if people are
used to a certain type of interactive performance with cat.

-- John