Endian mode and hPutBuf & hGetBuf

[Simon Marlow]

> Hope I'm not being to stupid here, but I think there's a portability
> problem with these functions for anything other than byte oriented
> data because the endian mode in memory is system dependent whereas
> for files it will depend on the format specified for the file.=20

Personally, I don't see a problem here.  hPutBuf is defined to write a
sequence of bytes to a file, and that's exactly what it does: the
interpretation of the sequence of bytes is an orthogonal issue.

We should certainly also provide ways to write binary data into a file
in a portable way... but IMO that should be part of the Binary library
which is currently being worked on.

> I would like to suggest additional functions..
> 	hPutBuf<N><E>
> 	hGetBuf<N><E>
> where N=3D16,32,64  and E=3DL(ittle),B(ig)
>=20
> The endian mode refers to the file format and necessary conversion
> to/from the systems "native" mode is done automatically.=20
>=20
> It would be nice to have similar functions for reading and writing
> individual Words too.
>=20
> There would be a similar problem with hPutArray and hGetArray
> if they were used for reading writing arrays of words other
> than Word8 (using castIOUArray perhaps?)

hPutArray and hGetArray do indeed generate non-portable files, and they
should be documented as such.

Cheers,
	SImon