[Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] installing streams library

[Jacques Carette]

[See comments at bottom]

Bulat Ziganshin wrote:
> Finally i've implemented the following (you then would use
> 'withForeignPtr' to work with contents of ForeignPtr):
>
> -- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -- Encode/decode contents of memory buffer
>
> encodePtr             :: (Binary a, Integral size) =>  a -> IO (ForeignPtr x, size)
> encodePtrLE           :: (Binary a, Integral size) =>  a -> IO (ForeignPtr x, size)
> encodePtrBitAligned   :: (Binary a, Integral size) =>  a -> IO (ForeignPtr x, size)
> encodePtrBitAlignedLE :: (Binary a, Integral size) =>  a -> IO (ForeignPtr x, size)
> encodePtr             = encodePtr' openByteAligned
> encodePtrLE           = encodePtr' openByteAlignedLE
> encodePtrBitAligned   = encodePtr' openBitAligned
> encodePtrBitAlignedLE = encodePtr' openBitAlignedLE
>
> decodePtr             :: (Binary a, Integral size) =>  Ptr x -> size -> IO a
> decodePtrLE           :: (Binary a, Integral size) =>  Ptr x -> size -> IO a
> decodePtrBitAligned   :: (Binary a, Integral size) =>  Ptr x -> size -> IO a
> decodePtrBitAlignedLE :: (Binary a, Integral size) =>  Ptr x -> size -> IO a
>
> decodePtr             = decodePtr' openByteAligned
> decodePtrLE           = decodePtr' openByteAlignedLE
> decodePtrBitAligned   = decodePtr' openBitAligned
> decodePtrBitAlignedLE = decodePtr' openBitAlignedLE
>   
Am I the only one who finds this encoding-of-types in the _name_ of a 
function quite distateful?  There is no type safety being enforced here, 
no ensuring one will not be encoding a Ptr one way and decoding it 
another.  Why not use Haskell's type system to help you there?

One could imagine putting encodePtr' and decodePtr' in a type class for 
example?  Or many other solutions. 

This is not meant to be a general critique of this habit of encoding 
types into function names, not of the particular instance above.  My 
interest in starting this thread is to discuss the solutions that work, 
and the situations where no solution currently seems to exist.

I believe there may be instances of encoding-types-in-names that are 
currently necessary in Haskell because the type system is not powerful 
enough to do anything else.  Using Typeable and a type-witness just 
moves the problem, it does not ``solve'' it.

Jacques