Unsafe aspects of ByteString

[Donald Bruce Stewart]

iavor.diatchki:
> Hello,
> The "packCString" function (and other similar functions) in the
> ByteString library break referential transperancy, which is one of the
> big selling points of Haskell (and its libraries).   Here is an
> example:
> 
> main = do x <- newCString "Hello"
>          let s   = packCString x
>              h1  = B.head s
>          print s
>          -- print h1
>          poke x (toEnum 97)
>          print s
>          let h2 = B.head s
>          print h1
>          print h2
> Output:
> "Hello"
> "aello"
> 97
> 97
> 
> This is already confusing because the "pure" value 's' has magically

Right, in order to support zero-copy string between C and Haskell, for
efficiency, the default packCString just wraps up the Ptr CChar to look
like a ByteString.  It doesn't copy it. If you the mutate the C String,
well, as you see above.

Here you should be using:
    copyCString :: CString -> IO ByteString

The functions should document this behaviour better. Of course, you're
paying with poke and C strings so you should be careful anyway. I'll
correct the documentation to explain all this.

Thanks for noticing!

-- Don