Udo Stenzel writes:
I'd like to see the following:
- Duplicate the IO library. The duplicate should work with [Byte] everywhere where the old library uses String. Byte is some suitable unsigned integer, on most (all?) platforms this will be Word8
- Provide an explicit conversion between encodings. A simple conversion of type [Word8] -> String would suit me, iconv would provide all that is needed.
I like this idea, but I say there should be a bit-oriented layer beneath
everything. Reading a text file, for example, can be interpreted at
three levels:
1. bit string
2. octet string
3. character string
Most of the work involves moving between 2 and 3 but there's no reason
to move from 1 to 2 automatically, either. In any case, if the functions
compose well, people who only care about octets don't have to see the
bit-string level.
For example, this progression makes more sense for UTF-16 files:
1. bit string
2. Word16 string
3. character string
--
David Menendez