[Haskell-cafe] uvector and the stream interface

[Jules Bean]

Don Stewart wrote:
> sk:
>> currently i'm working on stuff that looks something like this:
>>
>> 1 read soundfile from disk in blocks of N samples (IOCArray, hsndfile  
>> package)
>> 2 convert to CArray with unsafeFreeze (simple O(1) cast, carray package)
>> 3 perform FFT (CArray, fftw package)
>> 4 convert to UArr (uvector package)
>> 5 do some stuff with vectors

[snip]

> It would be helpful to see the programs people are writing with uvector,
> so I can polish up the API some more :)

It would also be helpful to have someone explain why we have:

Ptr a
ByteString
IOUArray
IOCArray
Data.Storable.StorableArray
UArr

Of course, I know the answers to some of those questions, ByteString is 
obviously less polymorphic than all the others there, and Ptr a doesn't 
contain size information. But it seems we have a rapidly bifurcating 
profusion of 'typed interfaces to chunks of memory' with no obvious 
consistency to their naming scheme and I think it's starting to get 
confusing...

Jules