alexander.dunlap:
To add to the laundry list of problems with Data.Binary, I don't like the fact that decode calls error on invalid input. I can't think of any great alternatives (using Maybe as the result type would be too strict, of course, and returning partial results would be difficult with polymorphism), but it seems a bit unclean that decode has to be used with the IO monad to catch the errors. (Of course, the only reason you would have bad input would be if you were using the IO monad, so the practical implications are not great, but still, it would be nice if there was a better way.)
That's right. Originally, it used a custom Either type, but it isn't possible to stream decoders that way. I'd consider it an intentional design feature. -- Don