On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 00:39, Ryan Newton wrote:

I belatedly found the below thread when trying to figure out what went down with unix-2.5.1.0, and it seems that the impetus for the ".ByteString" modules was to change file path representation, not the representation of file contents.

The point of that was that, at the time, GHC had changed FilePath in a way that was in fact rather broken. It has since been fixed, but still has no way to represent a *raw* FilePath but instead makes the non-POSIX (and in fact, only true on OS X and even then only guaranteed for paths used from Carbon/Cocoa apps) assumption that FilePath-s have known encodings. The ByteString version of the module is intended to allow apps that actually work reliably on Unix/POSIX systems to be written. The other use would perhaps be nice, but is already covered by the ByteString package, and while I understand that it is not considered appropriate to want to be able to write reliable filesystem-using applications on POSIX systems in most developer communities these days, some of us would still like the ability to do so. -- brandon s allbery allbery.b@gmail.com wandering unix systems administrator (available) (412) 475-9364 vm/sms

On 2/20/12 12:39 AM, Ryan Newton wrote:

I belatedly found the below thread when trying to figure out what went down with unix-2.5.1.0, and it seems that the impetus for the ".ByteString" modules was to change file path representation, not the representation of file contents.

It's worth mentioning that the unix-bytestring package grew out of my attempts at making System.Posix.IO efficient. Before releasing that package I sought inclusion into unix proper, however I was rebuffed because (other than the use of ByteStrings) I kept the same API--- but it turns out that noone liked the original API! Thus, I spun the package off in order to redevelop the API into something nicer; hoping that it would be included in the future. The issue about using ByteStrings for file names came about in a separate discussion because of some concerns about roundtripping file names on GHC 7.2. Given that the aforementioned unix-bytestring discussion happened on this list and in recent memory, I am *very* disappointed that the new version of unix has decided to steal the namespace that was specifically set aside for unix-bytestring. -- Live well, ~wren