FW: showing Handle is impure

[Simon Marlow]

=20
> I'm a little surprised that there always is a filename though=20
> - I thought (but=20
> haven't bothered to check) that Handles were used for=20
> anything that can=20
> contain a file descriptor: files, pipes, network connections,=20
> etc.  No big=20
> deal but what is the output in these cases?  (The file=20
> descriptor number=20
> suggests itself - immutable though not necessarily unique.)

And one other point I just remembered: if we allow hDuplicateTo:

   hDuplicateTo :: Handle -> Handle -> IO ()

(which is currently available from GHC.Handle), then there is very
little that is immutable in the Handle.  In fact, even the "handle
description" I talked about before is not really immutable, but it
doesn't do much harm to consider it immutable.

For example, if I say

  h <- openFile "/dev/null"
  hDuplicateTo h stdout
  print stdout

should I get "/dev/null" or "<stdout>"?  (currently GHC will say
"<stdout>", because I'm treating the handle description as immutable).

Cheers,
	Simon