PROPOSAL: add tryFdSeek to unix

[wren ng thornton]

On 6/29/11 3:18 PM, Simon Marlow wrote:
> I think it would make sense to refactor the unix package into a very
> thin "just the foreign imports" layer, and then the current unix as a
> layer on top of that.

Now that you mention it, I think that'd actually be really nice.

On the one hand, a lot of unix is just hsc2hs code for accessing C-bits;
on the other hand, a lot of unix is the various wrappers to provide a more
Haskell-like interface to C. Speaking technically, the former is the hard
part since it involves dealing with cross-platform and other compatibility
issues. Though the latter is clearly more challenging as an
aesthetic/ergonomic problem; which are too often overlooked in
programming. It's very sensible to handle the different problems in
different packages.


> It doesn't make a great deal of sense to do this for just one function,
> though. It would stick out like a sore thumb in the API.

True. FWIW, the String-based API in System.Posix.IO already exposes some
relatively raw wrappers to C. But even System.Posix.IO is just one module,
which would still stick out considering how many modules unix has.

-- 
Live well,
~wren