The Data.Array.* hierarchy is unsafe (or, Segfaulting for fun and profit)

[Nils Anders Danielsson]

On Mon, 04 Dec 2006, Simon Marlow <simonmarhaskell at gmail.com> wrote:

>   An implementation is entitlesd to assume the following laws about these
>   operations:
>
>    range (l,u) !! index (l,u) i == i -- when i is in scope
>    inRange (l,u) i == i `elem` range (l,u)
>    map index (range (l,u)) == [0..rangeSize (l,u)]

Even if these laws are not satisfied, is the implementation really
allowed to segfault? I would have guessed that the array operations
should still be equivalent to some pure Haskell program (e.g.
undefined).

If "laws not satisfied => any behaviour OK" were the correct
interpretation, then it would be OK for the Array implementation to
wipe all your files at the first encounter of a broken Ix law... ;)

-- 
/NAD