If you dont want to wait for libraries in development, the easiest way to do real binary IO is via hGetArray and hPutArray which let you get and put raw arrays of bytes (Word8). unfortunatly, there is no way to do binary IO in pure Haskell 98.
http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/ghc/docs/latest/html/base/Data.Array.IO.html
This is what i have been using (since yesterday). I did notice something odd. I create an array with newArray (0,1023) 0, open a file and pass the handle and the array to hGetArray. This gives me an Array with 1024 bytes, which I then cast to an array with Word16 with the castIOUArray (since my data is Word16 little endian and my machine is LE (intel)). When i get the bounds of this new array it still gives 1024 and dereferencing the new array's values gives me the correct values in the first half of the array, the second half is 0. What exactly does the castIOUArray function do?
there is some work on a standard Binary library in progress as well. Can you give me a pointer to this library? Thanks for your reply Immanuel
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