On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 12:07:34PM +0100, James Fisher wrote:
use the Data.ByteString library rather than standard [Char]
These are different. IN THE PAST: - We used String for everything, both strings and binary data. IN RECENT PAST: - We used String for treating... strings of characters. - We used ByteString for binary data. - To read an UTF-8 string we used a package like utf8-string: 1) Read file as ByteString. 2) Convert UTF-8 bytes into String, a list of Chars. TODAY: - ByteString is used for binary data. - String is used for text when performance isn't critical. - Data.Text (from package 'text') is used for text when time and/or space efficiency is needed. Data.Text uses the same 'tricks' as ByteString, but while the latter encodes bytes, the former encodes Char's. HTH, -- Felipe.