[Haskell-cafe] The question of ByteString

[Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH]

On Nov 2, 2007, at 17:35 , Andrew Coppin wrote:

> These are the things I'm thinking about. Is there some deep  
> theoretical reason why things are the way they are? Or is it merely  
> that nobody has yet had time to make something better? ByteString  
> solves the problem of text strings (and raw binary data) very  
> nicely, it's just a pitty we can't apply some of that know-how more  
> widely...

I'm under the impression that several of the things that make  
ByteString faster (e.g. smarter fusion) are either implemented within  
(newer) GHC already, such that other list-like types can take  
advantage of them directly, or being worked on as part of a new  
Data.Stream module that anyone can use with their own types instead  
of simple lists.  So in the long run it *won't* just be ByteString;  
that's just what's driving the development.

-- 
brandon s. allbery [solaris,freebsd,perl,pugs,haskell] allbery at kf8nh.com
system administrator [openafs,heimdal,too many hats] allbery at ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon university    KF8NH