PROPOSAL: add tryFdSeek to unix

[wren ng thornton]

On 6/29/11 1:44 AM, Bryan O'Sullivan wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 5:15 PM, wren ng thornton<wren at freegeek.org> 
wrote:
>> I'd like to propose adding a variant of fdSeek which returns errors
>> directly instead of throwing an exception.
>
> Why wouldn't you just wrap it in Control.Exception.try instead? And what's
> so special about seeking that suggests that it needs an alternate entry
> point?
>
> (In other words, I'm opposed to this proposal.)

Why should it be wrapped? Why not have the error throwing variants be
wrappers that case match against the Either?

There's nothing special about seeking, per se. But not everyone is
enamored of the exception system. In particular, libraries like iteratee
already have their own FFI bindings in order to work around this
limitation with the unix library. You'd have to ask John Lato and Oleg
whether it is more because of performance issues or
philosophical/linguistic issues. The point is, there are people already
not using unix because of this.

And, as mentioned in the proposal, there _is_ nothing special about
seeking; the same API is being provided by unix-bytestring for reading and
writing. The only reason for proposing this to unix is because
System.Posix.IO is the appropriate home, and putting it there instead of
another module will minimize transition issues once unix-bytestring is
(eventually) rolled into unix.

-- 
Live well,
~wren