[Haskell-cafe] Fun with ByteStrings [was: A very edgy language]

[Andrew Coppin]

Malte Milatz wrote:
> Stefan O'Rear:
>   
>> [Char] is a linked list of pointers to heap-allocated fullword 
>> integers, 20 (40) bytes per character (assuming non-latin1).
>>     
>
> Hey, I love ByteStrings!  ;-)
>   

If only there were a way to write functions that transparently work on 
both [x] and ByteString...

(Well, I mean, there *is* - if you want to write *lots* of code by hand 
yourself...)

Anyone have any comments on how ByteString is different from, say, 
UArray Word8?