Kevin Jardine wrote: > With respect, I disagree with that approach. > > Almost every modern programming language has one or at most two > standard representations for strings.
I think having two makes sense, one for arrays of arbitrary binary bytes and one for some unicode data format, preferably UTF-8. > That includes PHP, Python, Ruby, Perl and many others. The lack of a > standard text representation in Haskell has created a crazy patchwork > of incompatible libraries requiring explicit and often inefficient > conversions to connect them together. > > I expect Haskell to be higher level than those other languages so that > I can ignore the lower level details and focus on the algorithms. But > in fact the string issue forces me to deal with lower level details > than even PHP requires. I end up with a program littered with ugly > pack, unpack, toString, fromString and similar calls. > > That just doesn't feel right to me. That is what I was trying to say whenI started this thread. Thank you. Erik -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Erik de Castro Lopo http://www.mega-nerd.com/ _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe