[Haskell-cafe] Efficient string construction

[Kevin Jardine]

--- On Thu, 6/3/10, Daniel Fischer <daniel.is.fischer at web.de> wrote:

> Perhaps Data.ByteString[.Lazy].UTF8 is an even better
> choice than Data.Text (depends on what you do).

I thought that I had the differences between the three libraries figured out but I guess not now from what you say.

I had thought that String was a simple but memory inefficient model, that Text was for, well text, and that bytestrings were for binary data (eg. images, audio files and applications that required a true view on each text byte).

So why is there a UTF8 implementation for bytestrings? Does that not duplicate what Text is trying to do? If so, why the duplication? When is each library more appropriate?

Kevin