Discussion: Why is inet_addr in IO?

[Edward Kmett]

inet_addr doesn't do any lookups, it is basically a glorified parsing
problem converting from a string to a host address.

http://hackage.haskell.org/package/network-2.6.0.1/docs/src/Network-Socket.html#inet_addr

Why, beyond the obvious implementation details, does it live in IO?

Given that the current version lives in IO, should there be a version that
is obviously made pure so that folks who want to use it directly can do so
without having to bury it behind an unsafePerformIO?

This isn't a concrete proposal at this time, but more an attempt to sound
out if such a proposal should be formed.

-Edward
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