unsafeShift operations for Data.Bits

[roconnor at theorem.ca]

On Fri, 10 Nov 2006, Donald Bruce Stewart wrote:

>> uncheckedFoo - under certain conditions that arn't checked for, this
>> routine may produce well defined, but unspecified behavior. (as in, the
>> behavior might depend on something compiler or architecture specific)
>
>    uncheckedShift
>    uncheckedRead/Write

Doesn't a uncheckedRead/Write potentially crash my machine and/or 
overwrite arbitrary points of memory?  It seems like at least 
unwiseunsafeWrite could break the dynamic semantics by breaking the static 
semantics in a random and machine dependent way.  And still a 
uncheckedRead can segfault my machine.  I submit that any instruction that 
can segfault my machine is unsafe.

-- 
Russell O'Connor                                      <http://r6.ca/>
``All talk about `theft,''' the general counsel of the American Graphophone
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