Bjorn,
I am initializing a list from a file.  I am reading the lines from the file, splitting them into bytestring and then converting them to float.  Should I be using String  -> Float or ByteString -> Float?

thanks
Daryoush

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 6:01 AM, Bjorn Bringert <bjorn@bringert.net> wrote:
2008/8/24 Daryoush Mehrtash <dmehrtash@gmail.com>:
> I am trying to convert a string to a float.  It seems that Data.ByteString
> library only supports readInt.    After some googling I came accross a
> possibloe implementation: http://sequence.svcs.cs.pdx.edu/node/373
>
> My questions are:
>
> a) is there a standard library implementation of string -> Double and float?
> b) Why is it that the ByteString only supports readInt? Is there a reason
> for it?

Hi Daryoush,

are you really looking for ByteString -> Float conversion, or just
plain String -> Float? The latter is really simple, the function is
called 'read' and is available in the Prelude:

$ ghci
GHCi, version 6.8.3: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/  :? for help
Loading package base ... linking ... done.
Prelude> read "3.14" :: Float
3.14

/Bjorn

/