nr:
Sure, you can replace the openFile/hGetContents pair by readFile, but the real problem is the presence of the hClose. Removing that will solve your problem (but note that you now have no control over when the file is actually closed).
Can I just leave it hanging and rely on the garbage collector to close it in the fullness of time?
Yeah, once your program has demanded the entire file, it'll close the Handle.
Because of laziness, I believe there's no point in my writing the following:
load fn = do handle <- IO.openFile fn IO.ReadMode contents <- IO.hGetContents handle let xml = XP.xmlParse fn contents IO.hClose handle return xml
Is that correct?
Yep. Its not neccessary in the usual programming cases to explicitly close the handle. IF you start really hammering the filesystem do you start to care about ensuring files are closed (so you don't hang on to too many FDs). Or if you start mutating files on disk. For these situations there are strict readFiles, or Data.ByteString.readFile -- Don