[Haskell-cafe] carry "state" around ....

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

I think it may be time for a little clarity about aoicb's.
 From the Single Unix Specification:
  "The <aio.h> header shall define the aiocb structure
   which shall include AT LEAST the following members:
     int             aio_fildes     File descriptor.
     off_t           aio_offset     File offset.
     volatile void  *aio_buf        Location of buffer.
     size_t          aio_nbytes     Length of transfer.
     int             aio_reqprio    Request priority offset.    struct  
sigevent aio_sigevent   Signal number and value.
     int             aio_lio_opcode Operation to be performed.
  "
The "AT LEAST" here means that
  - a portable program may rely on these members being present
  - a portable program MUST assume that an unknown number of
    additional members are also present
  - a portable program may freely copy such a record, but may
    only pass it to a library function if that function is
    expecting to initialise it

For asynchronous I/O, this means that
  - you can allocate an aiocb object
  - an aiocb passed to aio_suspend, aio_error,
    aio_return, or aio_cancel should have been
    filled in by aio_read or aio_write and should
    be EXACTLY THE SAME object, not a copy of it.