[Haskell-cafe] (no subject)

[Ketil Malde]

On Thu, 2007-05-24 at 17:01 +0800, L.Guo wrote:

> Tring openBinaryFile, 

Well, did you get it to work?

> I can not locate which module including readBinaryFile.

This is what I find in System.IO (ghci> :b System.IO):

  openBinaryFile :: FilePath -> IOMode -> IO Handle
  openBinaryTempFile :: FilePath -> String -> IO (FilePath, Handle)
  hSetBinaryMode :: Handle -> Bool -> IO ()

so you have the option of either using openBinaryFile or openFile and
using hSetBinaryMode to true. I guess - I've never had to use them.  

I can't find a readBinaryFile either, but writing one might be a good
excercise?

Makes me wonder whether one should have binary be the default?  I'm a
stranger in Windows-land, but are there cases where you want reading of
a file to be terminated on ^Z?  Seems pretty awful to me.

Concerning mutable buffers, it is of course possible, but hardly
idiomatic Haskell.  Why do you need mutability?

-k