Re: [Haskell-cafe] Serialization of (a -> b) and IO a

On 11 Nov 2010, at 08:36, Luke Palmer wrote:

On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 12:53 AM, Jesse Schalken wrote:

...

I have had a look at hs-plugins, but it is unclear how to derive a simple pair of functions `(a -> b) -> ByteString` and `ByteString -> Either ParseError (a -> b)`, for example, from the functionality it provides, if it is possible at all. I guess such a thing requires thorough digging into the depths of GHC, (or maybe even LLVM if an architecture independent representation is sought, but I don't know enough to say.). Perhaps this is more a question for those interested and knowledgable in Haskell compilation (and, to some extent, decompilation). If not Haskell, are there any languages which provide a simple serialization and deserialization of functions?

As far as I know, GHC has no support for this. There are issues with the idea that will come out pretty fast, such as:

(1) Those cannot be pure functions, because it differentiate denotationally equal functions. So it would have to be at least (a -> b) -> IO ByteString.

I don't think I agree, I didn't see a rule f == g => serialise f == serialise g anywhere. Bob