Peter Simons
The problem is not Haskell, nor is it the implementation. The problem is that beginners, including yours truly, tend to write awfully inefficient code once you give them a "String" and tell them: Here, that's the contents of your file.
And it's just so *convenient* to use it.
Nonetheless, the problem is the inefficient code, not the language.
But even a simple, single-pass word-counting using the standard IO is slow, it would be really nice to write this in a straightforward way and still get decent performance. As somebody just said, you get to chose between speed and simplicity/clarity of code. I would like both. Couldn't readFile et al. provide the standard interface, but use hGetBuf tricks (e.g. from your 'wc' entry) behind the curtains? -kzm -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants