[Haskell-cafe] Serialization of (a -> b) and IO a

[Stephen Tetley]

On 11 November 2010 21:23, C. McCann <cam at uptoisomorphism.net> wrote:

> [Snip]  What started
> this thread, however, was the idea of a serialization function
> producing something like a pure ByteString, and why that, as opposed
> to (IO ByteString), would be extremely problematic.

I think the original poster was intrigued by the possibilities
serializing functions and their first guess a type signature was a
MacGuffin[*].

Its a lot of work to implement persistence. As far as I know its only
implemented for the Windows version of Clean. Napier 88's persistent
store was a very substantial development effort for a programing
language research project - multi-person, multi-year, EU funded
through the ESPRIT Basic Research programme.

[*] In case anyone looks up MacGuffin on Wikipedia, I don't think the
description there is strictly accurate. A MacGuffin doesn't drive the
plot so much as throw the viewer of the scent.