Hello Brian, Tuesday, June 27, 2006, 2:43:15 AM, you wrote:

achieve a goal. One other thing to bear in mind is that foreign calls are extremely slow, so for example it is much faster to use the Foreign.Marshal.Array and Foreign.C.String functions to allocate and populate a temporary array with the contents of a list, and send the pointer to this array to C with one foreign call, than to send each element of the list with multiple foreign calls (eg to paste only 19K of text from the Windows clipboard to my app took over 1 minute!!!

he-he-he :) just add "unsafe" specifier: foreign import ccall unsafe "Compression.h CanonizeCompressionMethod" c_CanonizeCompressionMethod :: CMethod -> CMethod -> IO Int afair, it was 60k or 600k calls/second on my 1 GHz CPU in http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~chak/haskell/ghc/comm/rts-libs/multi-thread.html there is description why "safe" calls are so slow: Presently, GHC handles 'safe' C calls by effectively emitting the following code sequence: ...save thread state... t = suspendThread(); r = foo(arg1,...,argn); resumeThread(t); ...restore thread state... return r; After having squirreled away the state of a Haskell thread, Schedule.c:suspendThread() is called which puts the current thread on a list [Schedule.c:suspended_ccalling_threads] containing threads that are currently blocked waiting for external calls to complete (this is done for the purposes of finding roots when garbage collecting). In addition to putting the Haskell thread on suspended_ccalling_threads, suspendThread() now also does the following: - Instructs the Task Manager to make sure that there's a another native thread waiting in the wings to take over the execution of Haskell threads. This might entail creating a new worker thread or re-using one that's currently waiting for more work to do. The Task Manager section presents the functionality provided by this subsystem. - Releases its capability to execute within the RTS. By doing so, another worker thread will become unblocked and start executing code within the RTS. See the Capability section for details. - suspendThread() returns a token which is used to identify the Haskell thread that was added to suspended_ccalling_threads. This is done so that once the external call has completed, we know what Haskell thread to pull off the suspended_ccalling_threads list. Upon return from suspendThread(), the OS thread is free of its RTS executing responsibility, and can now invoke the external call. Meanwhile, the other worker thread that have now gained access to the RTS will continue executing Concurrent Haskell code. Concurrent 'stuff' is happening! -- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com

Brian, mmm, no you wasn't missing the point : actually, i asked if we bind against c or c++. But that way, you answer the "general guidelines" part of the question. thx thu 2006/6/27, minh thu :

Brian, Bulat, thank you, thu

lennart@augustsson.net wrote:

Quoting Brian Hulley :

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It is defnitely *a* haskell. There is actually no word in English with a silent 'h', though this statement is unfortunately controversial and news to whoever wrote the spell checker used in many printed publications.

"There is no English word with a silrnt 'h'"... What kind of English do you speak? What about words like 'hour' and 'honest'?

Ok apologies for forgetting about these 2 words (and their derivatives) - I agree they do have a silent 'h'. I suppose they are the exception that proves the rule... :-) Regards, Brian.

Aaron Denney wrote:

On 2006-06-27, Brian Hulley wrote:

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lennart@augustsson.net wrote:

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Quoting Brian Hulley :

...

It is defnitely *a* haskell. There is actually no word in English with a silent 'h', though this statement is unfortunately controversial and news to whoever wrote the spell checker used in many printed publications.

"There is no English word with a silrnt 'h'"... What kind of English do you speak? What about words like 'hour' and 'honest'?

Ok apologies for forgetting about these 2 words (and their derivatives) - I agree they do have a silent 'h'. I suppose they are the exception that proves the rule... :-)

Don't forget "honor".

From the Collins English dictionary:

"honest" : not given to lying, cheating, stealing etc "honour" or U.S. honor : personal integrity, allegiance to moral principles ... So I'd say these two words are closely related, so the search is still on for another word with silent 'h' not related to time or integrity. Regards, Brian. -- Logic empowers us and Love gives us purpose. Yet still phantoms restless for eras long past, congealed in the present in unthought forms, strive mightily unseen to destroy us. http://www.metamilk.com

Jeremy Shaw wrote:

At Tue, 27 Jun 2006 20:36:30 +0100, Brian Hulley wrote:

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What about words like 'hour' and 'honest'?

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Don't forget "honor".

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So I'd say these two words are closely related, so the search is still on for another word with silent 'h' not related to time or integrity.

How about heir?

Thanks - I'd not thought of that one!

Also, until recently, herb and humble?

I think these depend on one's dialect. I'd never think of saying "an herb" but of course many people would.

Got those from this page:

http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/wordfrom/aitches/?view=uk

Which also notes that sometimes we still use 'an' even though the 'h' is no longer silent. For example, 'an heroic effort', or 'an historic moment'.

This is what I meant by the evil spellchecker writer - I think this is just some particular dialect trying to take over the whole language... Still everyone will be pleased to know that I won't post any more about this subject now that the third true silent 'h' has been found :-) Best regards, Brian. -- Logic empowers us and Love gives us purpose. Yet still phantoms restless for eras long past, congealed in the present in unthought forms, strive mightily unseen to destroy us. http://www.metamilk.com

On Tue, 2006-06-27 at 13:35 -0700, Jeremy Shaw wrote: . . .

How about heir? Also, until recently, herb and humble?

I grew up in the southern US, and I was taught 'herb' with silent 'h' but 'humble' with aspirated 'h'. With the 'h' silent 'humble' sounds very Dickensian to my ear. -- Bill Wood