[Haskell-cafe] Re: Strictness, order of IO operations: NewCGI & HDBC

[Tim Smith]

Hello, Haskell Cafe.

I posted a question a while ago about this, but didn't receive any
responses.  I'd like to try again.  I've got a test case which uses
John Goerzen's HDBC.ODBC.  The problem I have is that it appears too
lazy - using the results of a query after disconnecting causes an
"unknown exception".  If I use the results before disconnecting, it
works fine.

module Main
where

import Data.List (intersperse)
import qualified Database.HDBC as DB
import Database.HDBC.ODBC (connectODBC)

main :: IO ()
main =
    do
    dbh <- connectODBC "DSN=test"
    res <- DB.getTables dbh
    -- print (show ((concat . intersperse ", ") res))
    DB.disconnect dbh
    print (show ((concat . intersperse ", ") res))

Compiling and running this will show:

$ ./db-discon
db-discon: unknown exception

If I uncomment the first 'print' line, then it works as expected:

$ ./db-discon
"\"d1, foo, odbctest\""
"\"d1, foo, odbctest\""


Am I just expecting the wrong thing from Haskell?  Is there a
technical reason why HDBC can't synchronize the IO so that everything
is resolved before the disconnect?  Or is this a bug in HDBC?

Thanks,

Timothy
-- 
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.