[Haskell-cafe] unboxed arrays restricted to simple types (Int, Float, ..)

[Tillmann Vogt]

Hi,

I tried to use unboxed arrays for generating an antialiased texture. To 
make it easier to understand, here is the stripped down code that 
produces an error:

 >import Control.Monad.ST
 >import Data.Array.ST
 >import Data.Array.Unboxed
 >import Data.Word
 >type BitMask = UArray Int Word16 -- for determining the grey value of 
a pixel
 >type Pixels = (Int, Int, T)
 >data T = N | B BitMask -- this does not work
 >-- type T = Int -- this works if int the next line N is replaced by 
..lets say 0
 >f = newArray (0,10) N :: (ST s (STUArray s Int T))

http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/array/0.2.0.0/doc/html/Data-Array-MArray.html#t%3AMArray
shows that mutable/unboxed arrays only allow simple types:
i.e.  MArray (STUArray s) Int32 (ST s)

Isn't this ugly? Imagine this would be the case in C:


struct stupidArrayElement{
   int a;
   int b; // not allowed!
}

stupidArrayElement s[10];


Wouldn't it be nice to have something like: MArray (STUArray s) e (ST s)
with e being a non-recursive data type (like data T = N | B Bitmask).
My understanding of Haskell isn't deep enough to know if I have 
overlooked something or if the problem is solvable without a language 
extension. With a language extension I guess that it is not hard to find 
out if an abstract data type is non-recursive. Then this type should be 
serializable automatically.

What do you think?