Wait... System.Posix.IO.ByteString reads data into a *String*?

[Brandon Allbery]

On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 00:39, Ryan Newton <rrnewton at gmail.com> wrote:

> I belatedly found the below thread when trying to figure out what went
> down with unix-2.5.1.0, and it seems that the impetus for the ".ByteString"
> modules was to change file path representation, not the representation of
> file contents.
>

The point of that was that, at the time, GHC had changed FilePath in a way
that was in fact rather broken.  It has since been fixed, but still has no
way to represent a *raw* FilePath but instead makes the non-POSIX (and in
fact, only true on OS X and even then only guaranteed for paths used from
Carbon/Cocoa apps) assumption that FilePath-s have known encodings.

The ByteString version of the module is intended to allow apps that
actually work reliably on Unix/POSIX systems to be written.  The other use
would perhaps be nice, but is already covered by the ByteString package,
and while I understand that it is not considered appropriate to want to be
able to write reliable filesystem-using applications on POSIX systems in
most developer communities these days, some of us would still like the
ability to do so.

-- 
brandon s allbery                                      allbery.b at gmail.com
wandering unix systems administrator (available)     (412) 475-9364 vm/sms
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