[Haskell-cafe] Iteratee, parsec & co.

[Valery V. Vorotyntsev]

| 3. Why Seek FileOffset is error message?

Are you talking about John Lato's implementation [1]?

Well, `Seek' is not an error message. It is one of constructors for
ErrMsg, and ErrMsg is [2]

> --    -- a message to the stream producer (e.g., to rewind the stream)
> --       or an error indication.

You know the overall idea behind Seek, don't you?  It is an instrument
to implement random IO [3].


Compare Oleg's code [4]

> data SeekException = SeekException FileOffset
>   deriving Show
>
> instance Typeable SeekException where
>     typeOf _ = mkTyConApp (mkTyCon "SeekException") []
>
> instance Exception SeekException

and [2]

> type ErrMsg = SomeException
> data Stream el = EOF (Maybe ErrMsg) | Chunk [el] deriving Show

with John Lato's implementation [1]:

> data StreamG c el =
>   EOF (Maybe ErrMsg)
>   | Chunk (c el)

> data ErrMsg = Err String
>               | Seek FileOffset
>               deriving (Show, Eq)

John makes Err and Seek to be the distinct constructors of ErrMsg.
Errors (Err) in `iteratee' package are always Strings.

Oleg's ErrMsg is SomeException.  One of its instances (SeekException)
is a ``rewind the stream'' message to the stream producer. And the user
is free to have as many different ErrMsg'es as he needs to do the job.

  [1] http://inmachina.net/~jwlato/haskell/iteratee/src/Data/Iteratee/Base.hs
  [2] http://okmij.org/ftp/Haskell/Iteratee/IterateeM.hs
  [3] http://okmij.org/ftp/Streams.html#random-bin-IO
  [4] http://okmij.org/ftp/Haskell/Iteratee/RandomIO.hs

-- 
vvv