On 6/29/11 3:18 PM, Simon Marlow wrote:
I think it would make sense to refactor the unix package into a very thin "just the foreign imports" layer, and then the current unix as a layer on top of that.
Now that you mention it, I think that'd actually be really nice. On the one hand, a lot of unix is just hsc2hs code for accessing C-bits; on the other hand, a lot of unix is the various wrappers to provide a more Haskell-like interface to C. Speaking technically, the former is the hard part since it involves dealing with cross-platform and other compatibility issues. Though the latter is clearly more challenging as an aesthetic/ergonomic problem; which are too often overlooked in programming. It's very sensible to handle the different problems in different packages.
It doesn't make a great deal of sense to do this for just one function, though. It would stick out like a sore thumb in the API.
True. FWIW, the String-based API in System.Posix.IO already exposes some relatively raw wrappers to C. But even System.Posix.IO is just one module, which would still stick out considering how many modules unix has. -- Live well, ~wren