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

[Ketil Malde]

"C. McCann" <cam at uptoisomorphism.net> writes:

> This was my first thought as well! However, reading to/from a file
> would of course be in IO, at which point you'd be free to read the
> file back in through normal means to get at the representation. So in
> that respect, this is equivalent to (a -> b) -> IO String.

IMO, it's morally different, you're now operating on a file, and you
shouldn't rely on the contents being predictable.  You can make the
sin-bin argument that IO can do anything, but I think there's a moral
distinction between 

  serialize :: a -> IO ByteString
  x <- serialize f

and

  serialize :: a -> Opaque
  store :: Opaque -> FilePath -> IO ()

  do x <- serialize f
     store x n
     B.readFile n

You could probably already snarf chunks of the heap and dump them to file.

> I suppose one could object that this isn't actually serializing
> anything at all; to which I would respond that, in pure code, how do
> you expect to tell the difference?

Nice one :-)

I guess the real question is what are the useful, pure operations on an
opaque type that can contain arbitrary functions.

-k
-- 
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants