ioToST

[Dan Doel]

On Monday 24 August 2009 11:36:18 pm Bulat Ziganshin wrote:
> Hello Samuel,
>
> Tuesday, August 25, 2009, 4:36:31 AM, you wrote:
> > Shouldn't Control.Monad.ST export ioToST :: IO a -> ST RealWorld a, as
> > defined in GHC.IO?
>
> no. ST is a subset of IO monad with a limited set of operators
> guaranteeing referential transparence, as a result runST is a pure
> operation. if you provide ability to run in ST monad arbitrary
> operations, this guarantee will break. there are pother way to do the
> same - use IO operations and unsafePerformIO

The proposed ioToST yields a value of type 'ST RealWorld a', which is not 
usable with runST, as it is not sufficiently polymorphic, and thus cannot be 
used to write unsafePerformIO.

The only way you can eventually do anything with a value of the above type 
(short of unsafeCoerce and such) is to use stToIO to put it back into IO, and 
run it from main.

-- Dan