Re: [Haskell] the wonders of lazy IO

Well, not quite. ($!) (like `seq`, out of which it's built) forces evaluation only to "weak head normal form": essentially enough to determine the top-level constructor. Here, for String, that means only the first character need be evaluated, which in practice means only the first bufferful of the file is read. You need to use ($!!) or something like it to force evaluation of the entire file contents. [See http://www.mail-archive.com/haskell@haskell.org/msg15819.html.]

Dean

Ah, good point, I missed that.