[Haskell-cafe] Escaping of string literals

[Yitzchak Gale]

Michael Snoyman wrote:
>    main = do
>        fromAddr <- unsafePackAddressLen 7 $(return $ LitE $
> StringPrimL "123\0\&456")
>        print fromAddr
>        let fromStr = S.pack $ map (toEnum . fromEnum) $(return $ LitE
> $ StringL "123\0\&456")
>        print fromStr
>
> I get the result:
>
>    "123\192\128\&45"
>    "123\NUL456"

Well, the haddocks for StringPrimL say:
  A primitive C-style string, type Addr#

You obviously can't have a null byte in the middle
of a C-style string. So GHC is replacing it with an
invalid UTF-8 representation of a null byte, the
best it can do under the circumstances.
Then you just get those bytes back
when you read them as a byte string.

Yitz