On 2007-09-13, Stefan O'Rear
In any case, we already have hGetBuf / hPutBuf in the standard base libaries for raw binary IO, so code that uses getChar for bytes really has no excuse.
Except, of course, that hGetBuf and hPutBuf are (a) allocating the memory for the buffers is a pain (does it require the FFI?) (b) are something of a pain to use, requiring explicitly managing what's valid in these buffers (though a wrapper only need be written once) (c) while in the "standard base libraries" are not in the report or library report. i.e. there's no guarantee that a conforming Haskell implementation will have them. It'd be silly for an implementation to not support them, of course, but... The ByteString library at least fixes (a) and (b). -- Aaron Denney -><-