[Haskell-cafe] binary IO

[Jeremy Shaw]

On Dec 26, 2005 08:55 PM, Donald Bruce Stewart <dons at cse.unsw.edu.au>
wrote:

> pupeno:
> > It seems I have found a hole in Haskell... :(
> > Before I start to develop a library with functions such us those on 
> > http://haskell.org/hawiki/BinaryIo (hGetWord8, hGetWord16le,
> > hGetWord16be,
> > etc), is there some reliable library that can help me ?

> Use NewBinary, as suggested by that wiki page :)

Some caveats. The NewBinary library contains two things:

 (1) A uniform interface for reading and writing binary files and
     binary memory, including bitwise reading/writing.

 (2) A Binary class for serialization/deserialization

While it is tempting to use the functions in the Binary class (put/get),
it is important to realize that they do not care about big endian vs
little endian. Nor do they attempt to be compatible with equivalent
C data types. For example, Char is stored as 4 bytes.

However, while the Binary class in NewBinary may not be appropriate,
the uniform interface to binary files/memory could be a good foundation
for building hGetWord16le, hGetWord16be, etc.

If you submitted a module that added these functions, I would be glad
to update the archive.

j.