There's been mention of a Binary module; there is also one in the GHC CVS repository under (I think) compiler/ghc/utils/Binary.hs. There is currently discussion on the libraries list about getting a Binary module into the standard libraries. We are currently working out some details, but it will probably closely resemble the GHC Binary module (which is a conversion of the NHC Binary module). That said, there was also a post about using plain text. I tend to agree, except for certain cases. However, that is *not* to say that you should necessarily use Show/Read. For instance, say you want to write something of type [[Int]] to a file. I would strongly discourage using show/read on this, because read will need to read *all the way* to the end before returning anything, to make sure there's that last close-bracket. For this case, I would much prefer to use: writeInts fn = writeFile fn . unlines . map (unwords . map show) readInts fn = readFile fn >>= return . (map (map read . words) . lines) The same applies to tuples, etc. This *vastly* inproves the efficiency and, for long lists, tends to make them more human-readable (IMO). - Hal -- Hal Daume III "Computer science is no more about computers | hdaume@isi.edu than astronomy is about telescopes." -Dijkstra | www.isi.edu/~hdaume On 14 Nov 2002, Johan Steunenberg wrote:
Hello,
I am new to haskell, and to functional programming, and wondering how to store a Double, or any non-char, to a file. Do I have to make a char array of the double and store that? Or is it preferred to use the show and read functions?
Thanks in advance, johan steunenberg
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