On Sun, 2007-02-04 at 14:00 +1100, Donald Bruce Stewart wrote:
ekarttun:
Hello
I keep wanting something like:
binarySize :: Binary a => Proxy a -> (Int,Maybe Int)
in the Data.Binary for returning the minimum and maximum (or Nothing for infinite) space requirements for objects of a given type.
Proxy is just defined as "data Proxy t = Proxy", but omitting it is also possible. Would other people consider this an useful addition?
Yes, I've thought this would be useful too. A la 'sizeOf' in Storable. Should it be a member of the Binary class?
What would it mean? How hard would it have to work to be accurate? Is this just for (mostly-)fixed size records? What about lists? I don't think we should be forcing the list just to see how big it is. What is the use-case? Duncan