I Hate IO

[Alastair David Reid]

Simon Marlow <simonmar@microsoft.com> writes:
>   - A separate type and API for each kind of handle, defining only
> the operations available on that handle.  Operations which several
> types of handle share are unified using classes.

This thread is revisiting discussion from the Haskell 1.3 IO library
design - it might be useful to bring in some of the people involved in
that (i.e., Kevin Hammond or Andy Gordin).

The one bit of that that I do remember is that the Handle type was
explicitly intended to cover a wide range of I/O devices not just
files.  After all, if it was only meant to do files, it'd be called
"File" not "Handle".

-- 
Alastair Reid        reid@cs.utah.edu        http://www.cs.utah.edu/~reid/