Jules Bean wrote:
It would also be helpful to have someone explain why we have:
Ptr a ByteString IOUArray IOCArray Data.Storable.StorableArray UArr
Of course, I know the answers to some of those questions, ByteString is obviously less polymorphic than all the others there, and Ptr a doesn't contain size information. But it seems we have a rapidly bifurcating profusion of 'typed interfaces to chunks of memory' with no obvious consistency to their naming scheme and I think it's starting to get confusing...
I think the main reason for this is the lack of a generic infrastructure for efficient arrays which means that everyone is rolling their own. My hope is that the Data Parallel Haskell project will eventually provide such an infrastructure (but I'm biased, of course). We need it anyway and we are perhaps in the best position to do it at the moment. Unfortunately, we don't have too much time to work on it so development is slow. Still, I think (obviously) that the vector library is a step in the right direction. Roman