RE: Array interface refactoring
| Perhaps this e-mail could be read more generally as a | request to consistencify/update the (Data) libraries | in general ... | | Is this possible for Haskell'? Or is this too much | of a break? If it's possible, I'm happy to build a | wiki page for discussion (I noticed that a short page | has been started.) Library design is certainly part of the Haskell' process, as I understand it. And the refactoring you describe sounds sensible and desirable. What it needs is someone willing to take up the cudgels and do it. Library design takes real work. Simon ___ Haskell-prime mailing list Haskell-prime@haskell.org http://haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-prime
Re: Array interface refactoring
alson: We had a short discussion on the IRC channel the other day about Arrays. I advocated that we do some refactoring work and didn't meet with overwhelming disagreement, so I wanted to propose that the Arrays interfaces be refactored in Haskell'. As a Haskell new-ish-bie, the various Array interfaces seem a bit inconsistent and make learning/using arrays complicated. I *do* understand how to use arrays in Haskell, but I think that the interface could be cleaned up. Examples of current confusions: IArray and Array are dupes (obvious); listArray for IArray, but newListArray for MArrays; ! for IArray, but readArray for MArrays. And unsafeRead/unsafeWrite are too verbose. They are usually (almost always?) safe (since the code does its own checks), so perhaps this essential-for-performance interface should have nicer names? They're not in the same unsafe league that unsafePerformIO is. Just something I pondered during the shootout massacre a couple of weeks back. Cheers, Don ___ Haskell-prime mailing list Haskell-prime@haskell.org http://haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-prime
Re: Array interface refactoring
On Wed, Feb 22, 2006 at 03:39:48PM +1100, Donald Bruce Stewart wrote: And unsafeRead/unsafeWrite are too verbose. They are usually (almost always?) safe (since the code does its own checks), The same can be said about most uses of unsafePerformIO - you wouldn't be using it if you weren't certain that your program will behave properly. so perhaps this essential-for-performance interface should have nicer names? Any primitive with can destroy the nice properties of Haskell when *misused* should be marked as unsafe. The point is that you can do anything with other nice, non-unsafe functions and you will still stay within the semantics of the language. If you don't like those long names, nobody is stopping you from defining your own local bindings. Thanks to inlining, it should be as efficient as using unsafeWrite/unsafeRead directly. They're not in the same unsafe league that unsafePerformIO is. Why not? With unsafeWrite you can write to any address in memory, so you can crash the program, change values which should be constant, etc. Perhaps unsafeRead is not that dangerous, but you can surely cause SEGV with it. Or am I missing something? Best regards Tomasz -- I am searching for programmers who are good at least in (Haskell || ML) (Linux || FreeBSD || math) for work in Warsaw, Poland ___ Haskell-prime mailing list Haskell-prime@haskell.org http://haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-prime
