Hello Duncan, Saturday, July 15, 2006, 10:23:07 PM, you wrote:
So, while under Unix there is absolutely no difference which mode you use to open files, this makes difference on Windows. If original routines uses openFile then these routines are intended to work with _text_ files and their clones should give a chance to text translation too.
So presumably the correct solution is to have the readFile, writeFile etc in the Data.ByteString module use openBinaryFile and the versions in Data.ByteString.Char8 use openFile. That way the versions that are interpreting strings as text will get the OS's line ending conversions.
i will vote against this because in Haskell I/O system there is already informal principle that functions which open files in text mode has plain names (openFile, readFile and so on), while functions which open files in binary mode has 'Binary' in its names (openBinaryFile, at least). your proposal will add another way to distinct between functions working with text and binary files - based on the module where they are defined. this will complicate the things without need. it will be much better to continue existing conventions and name such functions readBinaryFile and so on. but because such functions was not requested for the standard lib, i guess that they also not much required for the new one. so, i propose to move these text-file manipulating operations to the .Char8 modules and don't implement readBinaryFile/... at this moment btw, mapFile should be also renamed to mapBinaryFile because it can't translate text files on Windows. such name will make it clear for users of this function and may save many nerves -- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com