[Haskell] Re: Top Level TWI's again was Re: Re: Parameterized Show

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

Can I suggest that this thread, interesting as it is, might usefully migrate to haskell-café.  (Apart from anything else, there's another similar thread running there, and it makes sense to keep together.)  Posting a summary back to the Haskell list, in due course, would be great.

Simon

| -----Original Message-----
| From: haskell-bounces at haskell.org [mailto:haskell-bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf Of Benjamin
| Franksen
| Sent: 23 November 2004 13:21
| To: haskell at haskell.org
| Subject: Re: [Haskell] Re: Top Level TWI's again was Re: Re: Parameterized Show
| 
| On Tuesday 23 November 2004 00:10, Aaron Denney wrote:
| > On 2004-11-22, Benjamin Franksen <benjamin.franksen at bessy.de> wrote:
| > > On Monday 22 November 2004 09:38, Adrian Hey wrote:
| > >> You have yet to
| > >> explain how you propose to deal with stdout etc..
| > >
| > > I see absolutely no reason why stdxxx must or should be top-level mutable
| > > objects. They can and should be treated in the same way as environment
| > > and command line arguments, i.e.
| > >
| > > getArgs :: IO [String]
| > > getEnv :: String -> IO String
| > > getStdin, getStdout, getStderr :: IO Handle
| > >
| > > Note that (just like environment and command line arguments) these
| > > handles may refer to completely different things on different program
| > > runs.
| >
| > Er, no.  The handles can be considered as the same but _pointing_ to
| > different things on different runs.
| 
| I wrote "may refer to", not "are", so yes.
| 
| > Keeping them outside the IO monad,
| > and only accessing them inside -- i.e. the current situation -- would be
| > fine.
| 
| I beg to differ. Note, I do not claim they are unsafe.
| 
| > They're not mutable in any sense.
| 
| Well, a variable in C is not mutable in exactly the same sense: It always
| refers (="points") to the same piece of memory, whatever value was written to
| it. Where does that lead us?
| 
| Ben
| --
| Top level things with identity are evil.	-- Lennart Augustsson
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