Jules Bean wrote:
It would also be helpful to have someone explain why we have:
Ptr a
ByteString
IOUArray
IOCArray
Data.Storable.StorableArray
UArr
Of course, I know the answers to some of those questions, ByteString is
obviously less polymorphic than all the others there, and Ptr a doesn't
contain size information. But it seems we have a rapidly bifurcating
profusion of 'typed interfaces to chunks of memory' with no obvious
consistency to their naming scheme and I think it's starting to get
confusing...
I think the main reason for this is the lack of a generic infrastructure
for efficient arrays which means that everyone is rolling their own. My
hope is that the Data Parallel Haskell project will eventually provide
such an infrastructure (but I'm biased, of course). We need it anyway
and we are perhaps in the best position to do it at the moment.
Unfortunately, we don't have too much time to work on it so development
is slow. Still, I think (obviously) that the vector library is a step in
the right direction.
Roman
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